ok, so I bought a house that had a small little pond by my front door entrance, went thru the whole process of putting in koi and having them die due to my lack of knowledge over airation\filtration etc etc. SO over the last 6 years I have pretty much had my ups and downs, but has all been a good learning experience. So over the last 2 years I have pretty much jacked up on a good submersible and 2 bio filters which honestly keep my water crystal clear. Dont have a uv light or anything like that, as my pond is never in direct sunlight, only ever use abit of pond clear now and then.

So I bought koi some 2 years ago and they have grown to quite a decent size now, and I have realised that the current pond is going to get abit small for them. So arriving back from holiday last week I decided to dig a hole and start building a bigger pond, so here is my old pond, and pics of progress so far on my new pond.

To be honest this started out as just an added house feature to make my house look "smarter" but after spending hours just watching them swim around I have soon realised how therapeutic this is and cannot wait to finish off my bigger pond. My koi might not be the nicest but I love them, they really give me joy and thats all I want from them!

My Current pond project

Started with the digging of the hole 08\07\2009



then Started with reinforcement on the 10\07\2009



Then started with the concrete sheel 13\07\2009



Currently my shell looks like this, will be plastering on saturday, then waterproofing next week sometime.




This is my current pond, when I transfer my fish to my new pond I will take better pics of them, doubt anyone will be able to tell me what koi I have, from my reading my 1 is a sanke. Don't know if anyone can tell from these pics



My babies






Any comments welcome

Well done, you seem to know your onions with the concrete handpacking.
Check with the experts i feel you should divert your gutter downpipe away from pond. Your current pond could serve you well as a future QT pond.

Yes, my gutter downpipe will be re routed, just pulled it out so as to get the concrete packing complete on that side.

Sorry for ignorance but what do you mean by future QT pond?

Thanks again for you reply!

One more thing, the dimensions of my new pond are roughly 4.2(L)x1.6(W)x1.3(D) what would the best plastering mix be and how many bags do you think I would need. The guys plastering have told me they will plaster with a 1cement to 2bags plastering sand, then when that is done after a week will seal bottom drain with sikalite and then paint with 2 layers of waterblok.

Please advise if this is suitable enough.

thanks again

Hi Cliff
Check this thread about Albie pond rebuild. The experts gives good advise on plastering and how to use salt in the plaster mixture to good effect.

http://koionline.forumotion.com/posts-on-pond-building-f17/rebuilding-my-pond-t782.htm

Hi Cliff

Ponds looking good

Not sure about waterblok but im planning to seal mine with coprox, you can also add coprox cement additive and salt to the plaster. 1 bag of cement sounds a bit much two two bags of plaster sand, normally you work in wheel barrows, have a look at the back of a bacg of cement they normall have it there.

As for the fish i would say the one defiantly looks likes a Sanke and orange and sliver and yellow and silver look like Doitsu Hariwake or Kikusui, the red one looks a Khaku yet with out a pattern.

Pond looks good what sorta filtration are you planning on running ??

Hi Cliff
General aspects about quarantine (QT)
http://koionline.forumotion.com/quarantine-f2/general-aspects-about-quarantine-t26.htm

LJ,

I will take better pics of my koi in a bucket on the weekend for you to see,

As for my filtration that I'm doing. I've basically got a 50mm bottom drain which I will have flowing into a 25l Drum, now because I have basically put the pond right outside my sons room I dont want to run a pool pump because of the noise and secondly because I already have a 4000l an hour submersible and thats alot cheaper to run.

So the system I have in mind is the following.

50mm Bottom drain - 25l Drum which I will sink below pond level, this will house my submersible pump aswell where as the drum fills up the pump will then pump the water out thru a 20mm convert to 50mm pipe into an ultrazap 15l bio filter with uv then onto a water feature which I am still to build then back into the pond.

The idea I have to have a submersible is to have the drum act abit as a settlement chamber but with a pump in, I also have a spare sand filter dome at home so was even thinking of keeping the drum as a "settlment" feed from there into my sandfilter dome which instead of having sand in I will keep bio balls and orange bags with medium in, then from the dome feed that to the ultra zap then thru the UV back to the pond.

On my submersible it has an outlet on the front for suction which a 20mm pipe can be connected to, so just to make sure my flow from the bottom drain is strong I was thinking of just directing this 20 pipe into the 50mm pipe to increase the flow rate into the drum "settlement chanber"

What do you think?

I've also been reading Albie's post extensively so have a good idea on the plaster mix I need to use.

Last Q, so would you suggest I stay away from the waterblok, and what would be the best way to seal around my bottom drain??

thanks again

Hi Cliff

The 25ltr Drum seems a bit small not sure if the flowrate to the drum form the 50mm bottom drain will be able to keep up, normally the guys go with a 110mm pvc to a settlement chamber ??

The 4000 ltr/h pump will be needing around 60 litres a minute, not very confident the 50mm drain can supply that especially if your settlement is only going to be around 25ltr ?.

Also you don't seem to have mechanical filtration to remove solids before the bio filter, it normally goes settlement then mechanical then biological.Also keep in mind you will need to flush the settlement to remove an waste and solids - bit hard if it is under the ground ?

Im no expert when it come to this but thats just going from what i have read.

Cheers
Lee

As for the bottom drains you can use Prostruct 617ns from StonCor : http://www.stoncor.co.za/index.html as recommended by Pieter, however i used pratley putty standard setting (used to seal crack in ponds) before i found heard about that product.

Cheers
Lee

Sorry....my bad, the drum I will be using is quite big, at least the size of one of those black dustbins, I''m not very good with sizes so suspect it will probably be at least 50litres???

I'm 6ft1 and when I stand next to it it comes well to my waste and is quite wide in diameter, as wide as a black bin, think the capacity on both must be the same.

I'm also alittle concerned about the flow rate, thats why on the submersible I have it has a 20mm suction outlet which i will direct into the 50mm bottom drain pip so as to creat additional suction. As for cleaning it, it wont be completely into the ground and will be using a suction pump to clean out debris on the bottom every now and then.

Still trying to get my head around the whole fitration scenario so that I dont have something that drives the kids up the wall at bedtime and that is totally electricity hungry and quite effective on the pond, will probably put in another submersible which I will connect to a skimmer on the top even tho I dont really have many leaves close by.

last thing, on your mechanical question, I will have the big drum submersed below pond level acting sort of as a settlement chanber, I then have a spare pool sand filter drum at home which instead of keeping sand in I will fill up with bio balls and plastic medium, then from that I will feed it into a ultra zap bio filter, then thru a uv then back into my pond.......wopuld that suffice????

cool,thanks Lee.........from what I've been reading it should be:
1 x Wheel barrow cement
4 x wheel barrows plastering sand
1 x 25kg salt
1 x 1kg Coprox

Is that correct???

Also how many bags cement in total do you think my pond would use?????

Spoke to an agent at coprox and they advised that on my size pond I would need for plastering:
5 x bags 50kg cement
1 x cubic meter plastering sand
5 x 2.5kg coprox cement additive

The mix would be 1 bag cement, 3 wheelbarrows sand and 1 bag coprox

Now do I add salt to this, remember someone saying in Albie's post that 25kg to a mix is too much so I was thinking 5kg's of salt to the above mix........would that be ok??

Then on the Masonry Waterproofing side to paint the inside of this shell they were saying I would need 5 x 5kg bags of the masonry goods which is mixed on a 1:1......now the difficult thing for me to understand is it using 5 bags of this stuff which seems like a hectic lot. I was told to use waterblok on sealing the inside but see everyone here talks about coprox so would prfer that then, just 5 bags at R350 a bag seems a bit too much for my liking.

any advice appreciated!!!