In the heat of SUMMER, I have pissed off a few, and others just drifted. Posts are down except for me. I really enjoy this forum, hope it picks up again.
To that end, have been wanting to post how I would build a garden pond. No one gives a crap about that, but it will be fun for me. Since traffic is down, I can sneak it in. This will be a long thread and will be fun - for me. Any comments or questions will be appreciated. Water-critter keeping has been a long time hobby of mine.
I think 99% of advice given on ponds is wrong. Some idiot posts something, it is repeated a thousand times by lazy people and becomes fact. That is how the internet works.
All pond installations are different. Some are Lake Hartwell and some are a pot with a plant. It is kinda like choosing a plant for your yard, many considerations must be taken into account if you want success.
I put in my first outdoor pond around 1995 --> 5 gallons. I was hooked. I scraped out a hole, lined it with concrete and made a water fall with plastic saucers. I was a happy/proud guy. It had a lot of flaws or as I call them - "teaching moments".
I knew nothing about outside, but had been an above average aquarium guy for many years. I mostly have that hobby nailed down. I have had one of more aquariums since 1970. I have one now. My first attempts go back to the 50's when I caught crayfish or bought gold fish for a dime. Outdoor critter keeping uses the exact same science.
I put in a 125 gallon pond that went well.
Before I moved South, I put in ponds to move my critters to. It consisted of three 220 gallon ponds from Home Depot linked together. It was great and I could not believe how happy me and my critters were.
I build a box, hauled in dirt to fill it and located the top pond there. There is a spillway on the right that drops water into the second pond, then it flows to the third. From the third it goes under ground to a 55 gallon trash barrel I dug into the ground and put a pump into. The water is pumped to the top pond and gravity takes over.
It worked great. I just had a canoe then and used it to haul those rocks over from an island (lots of work). This is a later photo after I had some plants and Ivy growing.
Soon, I wanted more. I had learned a lot. This thread will be about me building a 4000 gallon pond and how I went about it. You can learn from my mistakes and get ideas as to how to go about building your project.