Pond Construction pictures

Here are the pictures I took of my first pond construction.

 

A small excavator is brought into the backyard. You will be amazed how much earth was removed – a few trucks load! The excavation turned my backyard into a construction site overnight. My surprised neighbour popped her head over the fencing and asked, “Are you building a swimming pool?”

 

After excavation is completed, the piping work, the initial mould for the pond’s outer structure and steel mesh for the reinforced concrete was put up. You can see the piping for the two bottom drains for the main pond, bottom drains for the filter chambers, some of the piping to the waterfall and to the venturi pipes. 

This picture shows the pond inner structure completed using plywood. Concrete is then poured into the mould and left to set for a few days. Once the concrete sets in, the wooden mould is dismantled.

The steel bars sticking out of the concrete pond are later bent inwards to form the steel support structure for the waterfall overhang and broken stone paving as mentioned in earlier post. Additional concrete is used after the mould for the extensions are built using plywood.

Completed concrete pond! The photo (above left) shows the structure for the small waterfall that feeds in to the small, shallow pond for the water garden. This will in turn overflow into the main Koi pond. Now to add the decorative rocks, finishing and build the waterfall structure. The photo (above right) shows the main pond with waterfall structure built using bricks as the foundation. Granite rocks. size of a football, are cemented together to build the waterfall, piece by piece from bottoms up. Nooks and crannies are added in the waterfall structure to provide space to hold soil for plants.

Filter chambers are added into the filter using pre-cast concrete slabs. Wire meshes are added at the bottom to hold the filter media. Timber decks, using water resistance chengal wood, are used to cover the filter system. Removable boards allow filter maintenance. Filter mats are placed in the first chamber. Sacks of crushed corals and shells are placed in the second and third chambers.

For my first pond, I did not pay for epoxy coating. Raw cement will leached and turn water alkaline. To get rid of the alkali in raw cement and “run-in” the pond, I was asked to soak a few pineapples (cut into chunks, skin and all) in the pond for a few days before washing out the pond and refilling it with clean water.

A good time to measure the pond volume, especially for informal ponds where the shape is irregular, is when you are filling in the water for the first time or refilling the pond after completing draining it. The standard water meter, fixed by the utility company, at my house provided the readings. Knowledge of the pond volume is important so you know how much salt or medication to add to the water when treating sick fish later.

The whole construction to this stage took about two weeks. At least now my backyard is no longer looks like a construction site!

The biological filter will still require time to cultivate the bacteria and function properly.  Bacteria cannot grow unless there is fish waste or ammonia to feed the bacteria. A good practice is to add some cheap “sacrificial” fish to start the nitrogen cycle. However, I was impatient and also somewhat confident of my fish keeping skills that I decided to go for it. Shopping for Koi is exciting and fun for the wife and kids. It was an opportunity to visit the rural parts of Singapore where the Koi farms are located. I bought 3 small, average grade kohaku and 2 showa to start my pond. As Koi are relatively expensive, it naturally prevented me from splurging a big sum of money and overstocking the pond from day one.

Freeze-dried bacteria are added to the filter to speed up the process. Bought my first water test kit and started monitoring water quality for the next few weeks.

Glad to say that I did not lose any Koi during the pond and filter start up process was pretty uneventful. I think the regular water monitoring, partial water changes, freeze dried bacteria and maybe some luck helps.