THE POND-- 2 YEARS LATER STILL 6 TO GO

Welcome back to the pond two years later. During those 2 years we learned what to use in the pond to keep the algae in check, what floaters and oxygenating plants to use,and what to do with the fish in winter. We (I) learned to be careful when readjusting rocks at the waterfall because it was NOT quite right. For the most part, the pond had been very good. The kids kept slipping in more and more fish without telling me. At that point, there were 13 fish in the pond.

At the two year mark, about halfway through the summer, I noticed I was losing water from the pond for some reason. I would fill the pond to the overflow level and 2 days later, it would be down 6 inches. Obviously i had a leak somewhere.Upon close inspection of the liner, I could see that the tarp was wearing out.With the fish swimming near the bottom and turning up any dirt or dust that had fallen in, only the threads of the tarp were left. I think that was because the fish were spawning in the dirt and small pebbles on the bottom of the pond.

What to do? RIIIIIGHT! put in a new liner. This required taking 13 fish and the babies that we could catch out of the pond.Then we removed the pump and hose,drained the water and lifted that BIG rock from the pond again. Then we moved the ton of rock around from around the pond. We then went out and bought the proper pond liner. this liner is not exactly cheap. We brought it back to the house and relaid the liner. We then had to put the ton of rock back in place, lift the big rock back into the pond and add 700 gallons of water. When this was completed, we reconnected the pump and hose. We then had to wait a full day for the water to warm up before adding the fish and the plants.

To top all of this off, the waterfall was worse than before, which meant trying to fix it once again. So far we had made this pond three times. Was that the lucky number? Stay tuned.