Do It Yourself building a pond

It took me a bit to find this but here is a link to my old personal website when I used to have a pond at my apartment. The pictures were taken as I was re-building it but I have the info on what I did.

These photos were taken as I was un-winterizing and upgrading the system for the summer. I had tons of plants but most of them were annuals so of course they were not there and most of the perennials I moved away so I could do work on the ponds.

<a class="postlink" href="http://ryanerb.com/ryanspage/mainpond.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://ryanerb.com/ryanspage/mainpond.htm</a>

 

nice i think i know what i want to do probally have a triangle one and put the stuf on side

 

also if you have hawks and such watch out. i have lost many of high dollar koi to hawks.

 

you lost high dollar koi to hawks dive bombing your pond?

 

I too had a red-tail hawk that would hunt my ponds! Only did it a few times but when it did half of my stock in one pond was gone.

No they did not "dive bomb" they flew next to the pond and watched and when the time was right they grabbed them and flew off. I did have the pleasure/frustration of watching them do it once.

Fortunately they kept grabbing my Comet Goldfish and not the Koi or Fantails.

 

Whoa thats nuts! I was picturing these hawks swooping in and slamming into the bottom of the pond, or gracefully skimming the surface and running into the sides lol

 

The one I saw grabbed it with its talons.... and then carried it off. Specifically it hunted from a fence and dropped down and grabbed the fish when they came near the surface in the shallow part of the pond.

 

On another note, at work we have 2 ponds in the infield of the racetrack. The ponds have geese that are always there.

There is a few families of Bald Eagles that live in the woods a few hundred yards from the track..... They drop onto the inside rail of the track and wait for a baby goose to wander away from the parents and grab it. Occasionally they have gotten a hold of the adults but they do struggle with them and have to take them out where they are. They cant carry them off.

Watching eagles and hawks hunt is quite interesting.

 

any way to stop this?

 

No, unfortunately you are adding an ecosystem into your yard.... the only way to really prevent it is place a protective mesh over your pond.

Also because of creating an ecosystem you also get other things like mosquitoes (bad things) which attract dragonflies (good thing). You want grassy plants near the pond and even draping over the pond to promote dragonflies to breed near the water as the dragonfly larvae feeds on mosquito larvae.

They sell what looks like spikes that discourage birds from perching and that could be used to decrease the number of predatory birds but wont eliminate the problem. These spikes you usually see on signs over building, speakers at event locations like ball parks and any place people want to keep birds from pooping on people.

The flaw to that is you loose the beauty of the birds you may want to see like native song birds, doves and other things like that.

 

You can prevent the hawks by tying fishing line over the pond. Once the birds run into this and "clothes line" themselves they will get fed up and eventually give up. Sorta like what happens to you after that first time you run into the clothes line.

 

thats mean!!! but funny and could/should work depending on how hungry and persistent the hawk is

 

or you can hook up a metal mesh to a car batery and have fried hawk =] jk

 

...most serial killers start off killing animals....

 

not killing just zapping them real hard or setting a rig and let the battery do the killing =]

 

Lets not kill anything.

 

its not fish related

 

Hey.... bird lover none the less here

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haha i was just kiding i love birds to from cicks to pigeon to parrots

 

I like the chicks too!