Calling all pond owners

[PondersEnder]

Thought I’d start a pond thread now that we’re in spring. We’ve recently moved into a new house that had a lined pond which was not at all looked after, and after many, many hours of work (including rescuing a lot of frogs and fish) we have now installed a 1000 litre preformed pond.

Still very new to pond-keeping so if there are any pond enthusiasts out there let me know as I am constantly googling at the moment!

Pond stats here:
1000 litres - preformed
Home to approximately 10 fish (species yet to be determined as the rescue was very traumatic!)
Plus lots of tadpoles doing well
UV filter and pump installed
Lots of plants in with more on the way
Hedgehog ramp in place
Pond snails on the way

Any top tips? Things you wish you’d known when starting out? Favourite pond plants?

How so?

I got some pond mussels for my pond and they help to filter the water naturally. I only have a small wildlife pond with no electric near it so I'm relying on nature doing its thing. We had 6 frogs join the 2 fish in the pond for a while and have seen a lot of birds drinking from the pond too. I've got a lot of oxygenating plants and things for the fish to hide under too.

Another question I have is for those of you with fish, do you have some form of waterfall/water aeration system alongside the filter or do you just have a filter? We have an external filter that returns water back to the pond via a hose in the water (do not have a waterfall or anything). Will that provide enough water movement to keep the water oxygenated? There’s a pump on the floor of the pond that feeds into the external filter.

Oh good, I imagine the frog is just getting used to the new space.

Yes we have a fountain to aerate the water.

I think it’s filter and waterfall - stepdad put it in.

And have fountain too. The pond is fairly easy to maintain now. Doesn’t get dirty.

Fish will dominate a pond they prey on smaller wildlife and increase the nutrient level which has a detrimental effect. If your pond is large go ahead but frogs and newts and bugs are great fun fish are boring and poo a lot in my experience

fish are definitely not compatible with wildlife. Thats why we just put in a few sticklebacks even though our pond is very large. I wanted to attract as much to the pond as possible. Unfortunately as soon as the newts took over nothing else stood much of a chance. They are cute though.

We have refugee fish from a neighbour's now-defunct pond. They've been there about 9 years. They're obviously happy as they are breeding.

We also have frogs, water boatmen, pond skaters, loads of damselflies, at least one newt and the annual swarm of tadpoles.

Lots of the tadpoles get eaten but there are thick mats of vegetation they can hide in there fish can't access.

We flush out the pond filter regularly but it's a pretty self-sustaining system.

If i turn my filter off and tap two stones together all mine swim up and and take the food from my hand. They are like marine labradors! I spend hours picking out the hair algea and they are crazy tame. It's an inherited pond but I think we have goldfish, tench, minnows and sticklebacks. No snails so interestingly I think an above poster might be right about them getting eaten. Our non fish wildlife pond has many snails though.

Our wake up call was Herons, decimated our fish, so we netted the whole pond in the end to keep them out.

We originally put in Goldfish, Shubunkin, Yellow Goldfish and Comets. Over the years they seem to have cross bred so we have all sorts including big black fish that never turned colour and white fish as well as yellow and orange and multicolour, mainly orange and white and yellow and white. The blue shubunkin trait seems to have faded away. Our pond had got pretty overgrown last year, clearing the worst of the plants (weeds?) recently I was pleased to see quite a few young fish as well as a few big ones. It does all need a revamp this year the netting is getting old and the edging needs sorting and bits replacing.

We have a bio edge on our pond that the fish don't usually get into, the tadpoles tend to be swarming about in there, baby fish often get in there as well which increases their chance of survival the adult fish are not picky about what they eat.