EWWWWW! My aching back, and sweating forehead... Ok...I'm just going to moan here. I built my first goldfish pond (fibreglass even pouring the resin by myself) when I was 12....I built another one in CT...and loved some of my sarassas so much that I brought them down here in May and temporarily housed them in a 20 gal. whiskey barrel liner....
Well, we moved down here (Dayton, OH area) in the middle of June and I am still unpacking and trying to get plants I moved down here in the ground....My neighbor offered to help me dig the pond (I think she felt sorry for the finny friends)...so, yesterday we started digging....Let me tell you.....this soil is pure clay. Today we just used the pick ax and shoveled out the chunks.
My plan is to build one which is roughly kidney shaped, and although I'd like it a little bigger, about 10' x 4'. At present it has two shallow 9' shelves on each end and we are trying to dig to at least 24" in the middle....I'd like to make it to 30...but this is very tough slogging....
I'm building a diy biofilter with a 100 gal. stock tank (already purchased and set in the location), and a settling chamber (I was going to use an old desicant barrel I have which is smaller than 55 gal, but I'm told that I should have a 55 gal drum), bottom drain, and a diy skimmer. I still have to chase down the roofing EPDM, and the container for the skimmer....
Has anyone made one of these? Greg Bickal suggests using a PVC utility sink....but, I'm wondering if there is something less expensive that I could use for the skimmer. I wouldn't be running the skimmer in the winter, and will have it set up with a submersible pump separate from the settling chamber/bio-filter/waterfall external pump.....
I'm also just posting this so I can whine a little....
As the CT pond had a simple submersible filter/pump set up, and was only 5' x 4' x 24"....I'm thinking the fishies are going to think that this is the fishie taj mahal (only I hope that it isn't a funerary crypt!...maybe I'm going to slip under the epdm...)