Cindy’s Other Blog

I decided to build this Koi pond after visiting Japan a number of times and admired their water gardens ponds and Koi. Our design has three ponds, the top pond has water hyacinths in it and is the filter for the pond, the water is crystal clear. The middle pond has a waterfall from the top pond where the water gets aerated. The bottom pond holds about a 2000 gallons of water and the koi.

We enjoy relaxing beside the pond listening to the water cascades over the waterfall into the pond. Dragon flies dart in and around the shrubs and plants, bees and humming birds are busy flying from flower to flower. We sit for hours lazily in our lounge chairs listening and watching while the Koi swim around in the water garden pond.

We have about 6 water lily plants with large pink and red blossoms in the bottom water garden pond. They cover almost all the pond in the summer time but they die off back to their roots in the fall and re-grow in the spring as the days get warm and long.

We have about 40 Koi in the pond, it is hard to get an correct number as they never stop moving. I buy small Koi that are 2 to 3 inches long. They grow to over 10 inches.

We have had a lot of visitors to our pond. The most frequent ones are egrets. They land on our roof or the neighbors roofs then swoop down to our patio and wade into our pond. If I or the grandchildren see the egret, we let our dog out and he scares the egret off. He won’t jump into the pond.

We have also had raccoons play in the pond and try to catch the koi. We watched a mother and 3 baby racoons try to catch our Koi.

I designed our do it yourself Koi water garden pond, with stakes and string. I installed a 3″ PVC pipe from the lower pond to the top pond to pump water. I painted the block wall with an asphalt paste behind the pond to piled dirt on this wall. I constructed 4 railroad ties in an L shape, two layers high to make the front edge of the upper pond and the waterfall into the middle pond.

I constructed a 1/4 circle ridge from the ends of the ties to make the front edge of the middle pond where water would tumble over the edge into the bottom pond. I removed about 18″ of dirt for the lower pond, putting the dirt into the walls of the upper ponds. I put a PVC liner that we cut and glued to fit over the ponds.

I originally bought a 1/5 horse power above ground pump with a 2″ inlet and outlet. This pumped the right amount of water to get a good flow over the waterfall. The problem with it was that I had to keep priming the pump if the inlet pipe would suck air.

I found a submersible pump that is 1/3 horse power and was OK to use in a fish water garden pond. You need to check the fine print as some pumps cannot be used in a fish pond. I found this out the hard way when after about 6 months my pump failed and I tried to get a replacement pump.

I have rebuilt our pond about 3 times but we have had good luck with this design and the raccoons and egrets like it too. We’ve had this pond design for over 15 years.