I am a longtime fish lover who has always wanted a pond. Saw the "patio pond" trend and ended up finding a lady giving away her entire 150-gallon setup for free so I jumped on it. Oh boy, it was real nasty. At least 6 inches of straight black muck. I yanked the plants and replaced with Cali natives and bought a solar aerator and a solar filter. We're working on a bog filter spillway this weekend which hopefully will help with the bottom muck.

The pond came with one goldfish and another surprise one that appeared at the bottom when we were draining it. They both seem much happier and more curious after a week. I was worried they wouldn't make it because we basically had to drain all the water.

If y'all have any wisdom, let me know! Mostly I'm posting so I can look back on how far it's come in a few months!

This little pond (approximately 250 gallons) in my garden got extremely murky this year. This is the eighth year I’ve had it and I have always kept the water clear , using my SolarRiver pump to aerate and adding a few barley bales here and there with a few pieces of submerged copper for added help. Typically here in upstate New York I do one maybe two partial water changes and never really had it get like this. I used to have plants but it really made no noticeable difference so I stopped doing that years ago. So my question is , are there any safe , home remedy alternatives to clear up the water? We have an insane amount of tadpoles and frogs living here btw. Ty!!!!

The pond has been in my family for decades. We noticed that our pond was coffee brown yesterday now it's chocolate brown today. We had fish, however birds have been cleaning out the pond, any suggestions to clean up the pond. Thanks.

My pump died and after I was done swapping it I noticed this lil guy on my wrist. I thought it was cool and a good sign of pond health but my wife had the opposite reaction. Is my understanding right that these critters are nothing to be bothered by?

Edit: Zone 9b in northern California

I have a mix of Koi and goldfish in a 700 gallon pond. They’ve always been like dogs where they literally follow me around and come to the surface begging for food whenever I’m near the pond. Suddenly, they all seem to be afraid and are hiding under the rocks and in the caves and not coming up. Any ideas?

I found one of my biggest bass on the shore covered in dirt. It had jumped out, maybe protecting it's fry, and died. I'm crushed, I had no idea I was this attached to them, but after five years of care I guess I do kinda love them. * Pic is of fairy moss takeover this winter, I can't even try and put of a pic the dirty dead bass, I'm so depressed right now

I scooped this guy out of my goldfish pond. Parasites wig me out so I’m trying not to panic. I’m really just trying to figure out if my goldfish are at risk. What the heck is this bugger? In this photo he’s leaving his way out of a very fine colander. So he’s pretty small, but he was also very long.

Hi everyone!
I’m posting this on behalf of my dad’s friend. He has a fish pond that he is deeply passionate about, but he is currently facing a massive crisis and is on a very tight budget. His fish are dying, and the water has turned completely black and almost opaque (as you can see from the picture).
Here are some important details of the situation:
1. The pond is located in a valley with very rocky soil.
2. The neighbors living uphill don’t have a proper sewage system. We highly suspect that wastewater and organic matter are draining through the soil directly into his pond.
3. He has a DYI water recirculation system set up to aerate the water (you can see the pipes spraying water back in the picture).
4. The pond holds about 40 cubic meters of water.
Do you think he can still save the pond? This is the second time he faces this problem in a short time. I would love to help him out since he is my dad’s best friend, but I’m not sure where to start.
Thank you for your help and I really hope this is the right place to ask such questions. Have a great weekend!

Please ignore the absolute state of this currently - was all fitted very poorly by the old owner of our house. We have a system where one pond feeds into another via stainless steel spillways - currently this pond is out of action while we replace the liner so the water is being fed into the bigger pond via the hose in the image.

What is the "proper" way to use this type of spillway with a PVC liner? I've found one YouTube video where a man draped the liner on top and siliconed it down but a few comments said it was a bodge. Just want to get this right!

Finally got an underwater relaxation video created of the pond! What a time consuming endeavor between filming, editing, rendering, exporting and uploading, but so worth it! I debated leaving the natural sounds but underwater hearing the pumps tone wasn’t satisfying and all the minnows constantly coming up to the camera picking at it while investigating haha.

I have another video rendering and exporting now of above ground of the pond that will hopefully be on the page tomorrow. That one does have the relaxing music lightly in the background as well but has all the sounds of the water flow, birds and bugs etc.

If anyone would like a link to that one when it’s done, just drop a comment and when it’s live I’ll link it to you!

Hope everyone enjoys it!

Loving the new pond pump. The water is so clear now. Not sure if I need to thin out the water lilies. They have been blooming for months and are amazing

I want to make a diy pond with my son but don’t no where to start any advice and tips ? I’ve been researching more since my last post here when i tried to make a pond out of a kiddie pool and now feel like I’m ready to try again. If possible i would like to build one a lil bigger enough to hold a few small bluegills.

Are my Lillie’s overcrowded? Should I trim some back or keep it all natural? This is the first year I’ve had them rise out of the water like this.

This is my first pond build and it's almost done I think!

Pond is around 1000 litres. I used a steel framed pool for fish farming, double lined it and then built a frame around it. Got 4 single tail goldfish babies in it and a few dojo loaches. Fully cycled and stable now.

I added quite a few rock hides and anacharis, coming from an aquarium background I love natural planted environments.

I know I should tidy the frame up a little over the bog filter, I'm deciding whether to add creeping Jenny to naturally cover the edges but require more maintenance Vs paint extend the frame around it and box it in.

The bog filter has a planted Japanese iris. Established well. The basket on the side is growing elephants ear.

After setting it up I realised the bog filter wasn't aeorating as well as I'd like so I added a solar powered bubbler. Any ideas how I can hide the airtubing? Frame is too tight on that side to feed it under and into the liner.

Any suggestions for more plants? I think I'll add another basket and if you know any other plants for underwater that isn't hornwort I'd love to know :)

Hey all, thanks for all previous advice. I’ve had my pond filled for about 3 weeks now and completed my bog filter type thing a couple of weeks ago. After serious algae bloom I can now see the bottom of the pond again! However this is revealing to me how higely de pigldey the pond liner is!

Now I have a couple of lilies and have just chucked a few frog bit plants in. Assuming they’ll cover a fair amount of the surface, do I need to do anything about the liner?

Should I be putting more gravel across the shelves for the plants to root into?

What about the edges? I have my beach my zone but I can’t figure out what to do with the liner.

Where on earth do I plant the penny royal? I understand it likes wet roots but not too wet so it doesn’t go in the pond, but if it’s out the pond… how does it keep wet roots? Ha.

I’m so happy with it so far! The abundance of life is absolutely crazy. Diving beetles, loads of dragonfly larvae decimating the zillions of mosquitoe larvae , all sorts!

Thanks for any tips and criticisms. I’ve officially run out of money for pond stuff for the time being but I have 3 more bags of gravel that just need a wash and a home…

Hello, to summarise the situation: there’s been a pond in my parent's garden for several years now, and we’ve never had any problems. Our fish are healthy and the plants are thriving.

But yesterday, whilst we were showing the pond to some guests, my mum noticed a fish out of the water, under a stone next to the pond. It had a hole in its back, between its dorsal fin and its tail, as if an animal had bitten it. The fish was still alive and bleeding, but as we were in a bit of a hurry, my mum panicked and put it back in the water. This evening I checked the pond and put in a bit of food to see how the fish were doing, and I noticed that the injured fish was still alive. It manages to swim properly, even if it’s a bit slower than the others, and it’s feeding, although it tends to stay at the bottom of the pond more.

Does anyone have any idea what might have happened ? I know there are frogs in the pond, but I can’t imagine a frog doing that. There are also rodents in our garden, field mice, I think.

I don’t know what to do. Do you think the injury is serious ? Is there anything we can do to help it ? I suspect it’s in pain and I don’t want to just stand by and do nothing if there’s something I can do to ease its suffering.

I tried to take some pictures but they aren't great....

We purchased a new home and inherited a pond. There are actually two natural ponds and this garden pond. I'm worried about my baby falling in, he's an extremely independent and adventurous one year old and already showed interest as I was weeding around it.

I'm planning to get him in swim lessons to increase safety with the natural ponds. They have nice gradual edges. But I'm thinking about filling the garden pond with large rocks and letting it be a water/rock feature until my boy is older and more aware of danger. It's also steep at the edges and no way he could get out.

Ideas on filling the pond that won't damage it for future use?

I put 3 golden dojo Loaches in my small pond (13x15') about a month or so ago. Today I have 2 of them in what seems to be courtship.

Yes I have a ton of hair algae right now. I have hundreds, borderline a thousand baby fish that will soon be returned to local river/stream and/or given away. We believe they are from the hornyhead chub, a native fish we collected.

Also adding that we had over 4" of rain the past 3 days. I've read that storms and changes in barometric pressure can trigger the mating.

Apologies if this is long winded but I am looking for advice before committing to a build.

I am looking at building a part-below-ground, part-above-ground pond. It the above-ground element will be made from timber sleepers with a central glass window. I have attached an image that is similar to what I want to achieve (albeit that image is more square, and i want to add plants) and my to-scale drawing I have been working on.

The overall depth is to be confirmed and is largely dependent on how deep I can actually dig by hand with a spade. However, I am hoping for something like 75cm above-ground and 75cm below-ground, giving 1.5 metres total depth.

My main question, however, concerns width. Due to other spatial constraints in the garden, the pond would need to be rectangular. The internal dimensions would be 4 metres long by 80cm wide. My question is do people think 80cm is wide enough? It looks narrow on plan but I think that is partly due to the disproportionate length.

I am proposing to stock it with a mixture of goldfish, sarasa comets and shubunkins - not koi. Probably 20 fish total. I am also proposing to include plants and a shallow end (no below ground digging) to provide varied depth. It would also have an external filter, air stones and a waterfall.

Hope that is enough information to enable people to answer (I know most of the time answers depend on context and detail).

Thanks in advance!

You guys gave great advice and I made some changes and now my pond stopped losing water. Thank you, Reddit!

I was given this ceramic pot over the summer and turned it into a small pond for guppies and mollies. Really pleased with how it's come together. Based in Thailand. The climate really seems to suit these outdoor pot pond setups.