Are you intending to build water features? Do you have problems with your water features? Do your garden pond fountains and pumps come up to expectations? Are your water features always clean clear and healthy with colourful fish and thriving plants?

When a person builds a pond it is to achieve the vision of crystal clear water. The vision normally includes a pond full of colourful fish and attractive aquatic plants. Often the reality of a pond is something quite different ... a green smelly hole in the ground. This need not be the case.

This article identifies the really important factors that
will result in a beautiful pond, something to be proud of and which the family can enjoy. Something to add value to your home and lifestyle.

Before you dig the hole do understand that if you intend to keep fish then a biofilter must be installed. A biofilter
can be a fairly simple box shaped container with a suitable biomedia inside it onto which bacteria can accumulate so that they can do the job of purifying the pond water day in and day out.

The job of the biofilter is to purify the water first and
foremost. Fish excrete ammonia which if allowed to build up results in the fish poisoning themselves ..... remember those goldfish in the bowl which lasted about a week ... they died because there was no biofilter to purify the water. The fish poisoned themselves to death in simple terms.

The biofilter's secondary job is to remove solids. Many
people believe its job is to remove solids as its most
important function ... not so.

The best biofilter medium by far for conventional box-type biofilters is Alfagrog, a porous ceramic medium specially made for purifying fish ponds. Many people use plastic tubes, hair curlers, plastic coke bottle tops and the like. Be aware that these media need to be used in quite large quantities to be effective at holding sufficient bacteria to ensure clean (biologically speaking) water. You will need 40 times the volume of plastic tubes as Alfagrog to achieve the same biofilter capacity.

If you want to save money and reduce dramatically the risk of pond infections and fish disease do NOT use a sand filter for a pond. They are great for swimming pools, and bad for ponds.

If you want to ensure your pond always stays crystal clear then an ultraviolet light must also be installed since without this the risk of a pea-soup coloured water developing is great. Fish and biofilter bacteria need large amounts of oxygen to survive so a reliable pond pump which will operate 24 hours per day every day must be obtained. A biofilter even the very best (vortex type biofilters are the best but are difficult to install and are only necessary on large sophisticated koi ponds)

Once upon a time all ponds were concrete. Today unless you wish to have a very large or special pond concrete is NOT the material to use. It is simpler, cheaper, better and quicker to use pre-formed ponds ideally made from fibreglass in natural rock finishes with matching waterfalls or streams. If you want a pond whose volume is larger than about 500 litres then it is best and most economical to use a black plastic liner designed specifically for pond building.

So you can already see that a pond is not just a hole in the ground you casually dig one day and then hope it will add value to your life. Without care and knowledge that hole in the ground will cost an arm and a leg and will not please you. Unless you go out of your way to learn the really important parts of pond keeping then do not even dig the hole......... it will not be worth it.