DIY Pond?

   / DIY Pond?
  • Thread Starter
#41  
This thing is filling up quick!

20230103_165030.jpg
 
   / DIY Pond? #42  
The ducks will be very happy! :)
 
   / DIY Pond? #45  
Pond looks like it's always been there. Are the ducks using the island?

I put an island on my first pond so the ducks would have a safe place. The never use it. Instead, they like to sleep on the side of the pond, farthest away from the house, and where the coyotes can get them easier. I had to put up an electric fence to keep the coyotes out!!!

I didn't bother with an island on my bigger pond.
 
   / DIY Pond?
  • Thread Starter
#46  
They use it quite a bit. I used the duck house for the white ducks when they were little and still in an enclosure so they know it. There is only 1 of the 4 white ducks left (Maveric), sad day. When I got the mallards (Rooster and Phoenix) they were a little bit older and did not need a light. So I built their enclosure about where the white duck is hanging out in the picture above, when it was still just a little pond. I put the fence half on the dry land and half in the water. So the OG ducks have history in the location that is now the island. That's probably why they use it. You can tell they feel safer on it.

They still sleep on the side of the pond some too.
 
   / DIY Pond? #47  
Hi LBBJ,

I haven't been here much for a bit due to work and such, but I had shoulder surgery last week, so now I have some spare time while recuperating, and I found your pond thread in my search for things to read and look at.

I don't have much to say except wow, what scope and vision you displayed.

We inherited a small [1/8-acre] earth bottomed pond when we bought our log house which is in an appropriately wooded country lot of about 8 acres in 1994.

When we moved in, it was essentially sterile except for polliwogs/tadpoles, even though it was a couple of years old, so the first thing we were told to put in was flat head minnows,which we got a couple hundred of and then some weeks later, we added about a dozen koi and 10 channel catfish fingerlings [which we were told could not reproduce in the still water of a pond].

Long story short, our koi and minnows are thriving, but despite multiplying like hyperactive rabbits to the point where they were out-competing the koi, the channel catfish eventually all died off after a really long hard winter where there was apparently too much ice for them to cope with [although we do/did run air pumps w/ aerators year-round.
 
   / DIY Pond? #48  
I love that your immediate priority was to out-pond your neighbor. Priorities are exactly where they should be! I want to put a small pond on our 5 acres and have a spot picked out, just have to deal with the whole digging it part..Should be easy enough.
 
   / DIY Pond?
  • Thread Starter
#49  
I love that your immediate priority was to out-pond your neighbor.

😂🤣 I guess it was...

If the digging part gets too tough you can just install a hole instead. You just need to move the dirt out of the way for that, it would probably be a lot easier.
 
 
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