Building a Koi Pond!

Hello dear friends, although the koi pond isnt quite finished I thought I would share some photos of what we have done so far.  Last year we were offered 5 young koi from a friend that has a pond in the city.  Over time the fish in the pond have been reproducing and growing in size and it was time for them to get rid of some.   So....we brought them home and as so often happens at the farm a new and urgent project became a priority!  Every year at the farm we buy ornamental fish for our waterfall pond,  In the fall we transfer them to Lake Ophelia where they easily over-winter in the deep water.  In the spring we observe schools of gold fish living happily in the pond, getting larger each year.  Because Lake Ophelia is completely self contained there is no danger of the fish escaping into waterways.

The photo below shows the beginning of the new pond which is adjacent to a series of decks that run around our house.  We wanted to be able to view the koi from the seating area, and we wanted to be able to keep the koi close to the house year round.  This pond is almost 5 feet deep at the far end and is approximately 12 X 17 feet.

After building the framework the pond was lined with a heavy pond liner.  

We have an old rubble stone farmhouse and the area that we live in has lots of rocks.  The outside of the pond wall is being enclosed in a rubble stone wall.  The view below shows the pond from the upstairs balcony.  You may notice that we have added railings around the edge of the deck in order to comply with building code requirements in our area.  One of the railings has a shelf which we are referring to as our "bar".

We sometimes see Chantalaria gazing intently into the pond.  On occassion I have seen her delicately drinking water from the pond but we wonder...would she ever try to catch a fish?

When the pond is finished we will add flagstone to the top of the pond to hide the liner.

We have added different plants to the water garden and transplanted some of the bull rushes from Lake Ophelia to help purify the water.  Hint! : that is not a good idea.  It turns out the the silty soil that the bull rushes had been growing in made a terribly murky mess of the water in our new pond.  A candid conversation with the helpful sales person at Ace Hardware allowed us to see the error of our ways.  😢  Now we know that in future we need to either use special pond soil or we need to use containers that do not allow the soil to leach into the water.  Even with a large filtering system running it has taken weeks to try to clear the water up.

In addition to a filtering system a large pump continuously circulates water.  We used flagstones to create a waterfall and love the sound of the water.  The pond also has two bubblers which provide oxygen in the water and prevent the water from freezing over completely in the winter.  We also have a little resin duck floating in the pond that has a little water spout in its' beak.

This water lily was a transplant from Lake Ophelia.  Before that it was a transplant from a neighbour's pond.  We also had a yellow lily however it did not survive one of the winters.

We also have water hyacinths which are annual plants.  In warm climates these are invasive species but at the farm they are in a very enclosed area and once the temperatures drop they will freeze and die.

Some of the koi at feeding time.  By feeding them in the same location every day they quickly learn where to come for food.  We love watching them.

Our fish have also been busy starting families.  Here is a very young fish.  When small they seem to be all eyes!

I hope that you enjoyed this quick update.  We have also been working on the waterfall garden as well as trying to finish the work on the new master bedroom and master bathroom.  I will have some photos to share soon!  Thank you for visiting and enjoy the rest of your week.