Easy NO-PLUG Fish Pond Tutorial For Back Patio / Deck
When spring comes around I almost always set up a few of these really cool patio ponds and I never regret it so let's go through the complete process of how to set one up do it for pretty inexpensive and also not have to plug anything in there's a lot of different choices out there but I try and stick with the planter pots that don't have a hole in.
The bottom if you find one that you really like and it does have a hole you can always just plug it up with some silicone and a rock this is the step where you can either save a bunch of money or spend a bunch of money so stick with your budget and pick a planter that you like the looks of and doesn't cost a bunch next up you're going to want some.
Sand or maybe even some aquarium gravel we're going to use some bricks to help lift some of our plants up but those are totally optional and we're going to be using a really cool solar pump we'll talk about all these things in a little bit the last thing pretty much is going to be the plants This is highly variable it's just going to depend on what you.
Have available nearby like a local Garden Center but here's all the materials laid out not super complicated pretty much anybody can do this I want to talk a little bit more about the solar pump this I got a few years ago and it was pretty expensive I think it was like 60 or 70 dollars but these things have gotten the a little bit more.
Inexpensive so I'll have a link down in the description so you can check one out before you start to set your pond up make sure that it's in a location that doesn't get sun all day long I put mine on the back patio it gets the morning sun and about two or three o'clock it's in the shade and I think this really helps to cut down on the algae and.
Prevent other problems let's finally start to set this thing up so first of all we're going to be washing off our sand and we're using sand because we're eventually going to put some plants in the substrate we're going to try and kind of set this up like an outdoor aquarium I like to use sand you can use gravel whatever you.
Have around and it's cheaper for you that totally works I just hose it out until the water starts to come out clear and then we're ready to dump it in so I think this ended up being like two maybe two and a half inches of sand and that's plenty we don't need a ton in here it's going to work out perfectly when that's done it's time to start putting plants.
In here so I think this is a Sagittarius species it's going to be big and beautiful we just put it in the pond and then depending on the height of your pond you might want to raise them up a little bit that's why we have the bricks so you can see here I have the rim of that pot pretty close to the rim of this thing with this specific plant I want it.
To be a little bit lower because it's stemmy towards the bottom and that way it'll look like it's just coming up out of the water but other plants like this one pretty much you want it to be flush with the top so we raise that up on a brick that helps us out a ton so this Lily same thing I think we put it up on a brick here but we ended up putting it.
Down later just trying to balance everything out and get it to look nice let's talk more about the solar pump though so I can't remember what the wattage and the Deets are specifically for this one but I'll have again links down in the description it'll answer all your questions but these things I think are pretty crucial especially for bigger.
Pawns one like this you could get away with not having anything and be just fine but I really like to have them water movement is always a good thing to have fish are going to appreciate it especially when this thing gets hot so before we plug that thing in and get it running we're going to fill up our pond now just using Straight tap water.
Repositioning that solar pump we get that thing plugged into the solar panel and we're moving water already so this thing is only going to work when the sun is hitting it keep that in mind so it's only going to be on during the daytime that's okay that's enough water movement I'm happy with it something you're going to notice right off the bat the water is.
Pretty cloudy this is normal it's going to be this way for another day or two but it will clear up on its own and besides we're gonna make the water a little cloudy temporarily anyway with the fritz nitrifying bacteria we just treat this thing kind of like an aquarium it's going to help us to add fish faster anyway so why not don't.
Forget to add some chemicals to yourself while you're doing this project guys stay caffeinated and make sure you do it with a thermos that has as many fish stickers on it as mine okay world's biggest collection of fish stickers link down below thank you once again for your support something that you're going to want to.
Pay pretty close attention to at least in the first stages of your Pawn setup is the temperature we're out at the pond the next day water's cleared up pretty good amount but it can still get a little clearer time will definitely help that and certainly a water change but let's check the temperature here surface temp of this little Pond is about 63.
Degrees it's probably a little cooler down at the bottom but still that's definitely a little too chilly for most aquarium fish but there are some fish that we use in the aquarium hobby that are perfect for this you definitely don't just want to be setting up something like this to keep you know General aquarium fish because of the.
Temperature and because honestly most fish are hard to see in this type of setting and the same thing goes for if it's hot so something like this probably I mean maybe it's 10 gallons it's going to heat up really hot when it's a super hot day out we haven't checked it yet we haven't had that kind of weather but I'm guessing something like this surface.
Temps are going to be close to 80 degrees if not more on a super hot day the more water volume you have the more stable it's going to be and also the height of the water matters so this is pretty vertical of a setup that's going to help a lot at maintaining the temperature and then obviously having stuff over the top of this like the.
Plants growing over as it develops is going to help as well something like this shallow stock tub that we set up in the past and we're going to be setting up here pretty soon even though it's a bigger water volume it can definitely really heat up in the Sun so you got to be careful of that the deeper the better the more stable it's going to be and.
It's probably going to be better off for your fish the deeper the pond you set up is also going to help the fish to hide if you have problems with like raccoons or Birds even though we don't know the exact temperature profile of our pond I'm pretty confident on the Range that we're going to experience with this thing just because I've done this so.
Many times and because I'm going to be around for the next few weeks to monitor the situation I think it's pretty safe for us to go ahead and add some fish to this thing but before we add the fish there's one more plant that I wanted to add to our pond to make it kind of more like an aquarium we're gonna throw in some dwarf sag so I have a bunch of.
Extra pots here from aquarium Co-op Cory was nice enough to send some extra parts to me so we have some super healthy root systems on these pots man I mean forget the top foliage a lot of that is going to transform into the submerged form right but it's just going to help to enhance the look and give the fish a little bit more of a protected feel in.
That pond there's a ton of places that sell aquarium plants online guys I mean Cory's is just a really good one if you want the protection of buying plants because I know that's something that I think everybody thinks about you know you don't want to buy plants and then have them come in melted that's something that definitely does happen.
Aquarium Co-op is definitely a customer first business and that's why we use their stuff from time to time because they just provide a good experience for the customer thank you it was at this point that my wife figured out what I was doing and she.
Said that she would like to have some lily pads in her Pond unfortunately the lily pads that are at the Garden Center are just way too big for something like this but luckily we have some Lily Pad type things in our guppy tank in the living room so looking around here I was thinking maybe we should try and trick her by putting this in there but then I.
Remembered what would happen to me if we got busted for that so so we decided to investigate this big lily pad that was growing in here I thought maybe it was a dwarf aquarium Lily it looked kind of weird further inspection I realized that it was from a banana plant that I had put in this tank which is crazy because I've never had a banana plant survive.
Long enough to produce a leaf like this usually they just rot away and they make leaves that kind of grow up not something that's actually a proper Lily Pad like this but even this thing was still too big so I decided to pull out one of the tiger Lotus plants that we have and we'll see how that does I'm not sure never grown it in a pond before but.
You never know sometimes they Thrive golden White Cloud minnows are in my opinion the best little patio fish pond that you could ever add to whatever it is you're creating because of a few different reasons one they're super Hardy they can handle the little temperature swings that they're going to go through and and this might be the.
Best reason is because they're super visible from the top of the water hard to demonstrate here in my crazy little potato farm but you'll see once we put them out in the pond you'll be able to see these things from a mile away okay let me jump uh hello anyway uh I think everything's.
Good so when it comes to selecting the fish that you want to put in your little patio Pond obviously depends on the size of the thing that you're making most of the super stereotypical fish are going to be you know goldfish koi and then there's like a handful of fish that we typically see in the aquarium hobby that can work like the golden White Cloud.
Minnows but I don't think there's really a ton to choose from here especially when it comes to a small water volume like that thing we definitely don't want to put koi and honestly I don't even want to use goldfish I think the only goldfish you could do in that thing especially long term would be like little feeder fish but we just don't.
Want to do that so for me it's basically just the White Cloud minnows I don't have much more as far as recommendations go I try and only talk and recommend things that I know and that's just what I know I've done Cherry barbs in the past because they're also kind of a fish that can sort of take a temperature swing at least be in a little bit colder.
Of water but you just can't see them like they're too dark so that's a big issue for me I don't want to put stuff in there that I can't like see and enjoy but don't get me wrong there's definitely more fish that you can choose search up cold water fish there's a handful of them out there that can work good for you but the color that the.
Golden white clouds have I think is the reason why it just makes them Superior in my mind foreign thank you it's getting dark so I'm gonna try and do this quick but some questions you might have about the pond one I get them.
Every year what do you do about mosquitoes so mosquitoes are an issue particularly if you don't have any fish in your pond so because we put those white cloud minnows in there any mosquito eggs that develop into larvae are just going to turn into really awesome fish food if you're planning on keeping one of these without fish which.
Is something I think a lot of people do then mosquitoes can be an issue so one thing that you can do is just get some mosquito dunks they're a thing that I didn't know existed until I started doing stuff like this and the good people in the comments let me know about them you can get those at pretty much any Garden Center or you know of course.
On Amazon so links to as many things as possible for this whole project down below of course that should really help you out with the mosquitoes it should be pretty much a non-issue so now that you have mosquitoes all figured out what's something else that you're probably thinking what about water changes you might be curious is this something if.
We're kind of treating it like an aquarium do we need to do that and the answer is yes and no it just depends on how your setup up is set up so if you have a bunch of plants like this relative to the water volume of course with these three pond plants in here we're gonna not have any issues with nitrate we're not going to have to do.
Water changes for that reason the only reason why we would do a water change is maybe to remove some of the scum or some of the weird algae that might grow in this thing and again that's something that you can help prevent by putting it in a location that doesn't get the sun all day long so short answer yes we probably will do at least a couple water.
Changes on this thing over the course of the summer but not anything regular like once a week or anything like that if you're going to put a bunch of fish in your pond and maybe you don't have a lot of faith in the plants that you've selected you can always put in some floating plants like some Sylvania or some duckweed if you want to but again.
It's something that's going to grow like crazy and probably get a little annoying so stick with the Sylvania maybe not the duckweed other than that I'm sure I'm missing some of the super popular questions that I'm going to realize as soon as I post this video but if you think of anything I didn't answer it drop it down in the comments and I'll do.
My best to get back to you and yeah guys that's pretty much it enjoy your cordless Pond I know it does I mean technically it does have a cord like there's a cord attached to the solar panel but you can move that thing anywhere you can stick the solar panel in like a plant pot like the thing that's right behind me I could have put.
It there something small like this you know it doesn't weigh a ton you can drain a little bit of water out or you can just kick it around to the other side of the yard you can move it around if you're having issues with algae maybe it is getting too much sun you can always move it which is really nice you don't have to be tied to a wall outlet.
And I just really love that I love the flexibility of something like this so I'm not sure exactly when we're going to do it we need to do it soon here because it's finally kicked off you know being summer here want to set up that bigger stock pond and then I want to do a couple more of these in some different sizes and with some different looks so.
Something I probably should have mentioned at the very beginning of this video was like this is a 15 20 plastic plant pot super cheap the plants each were like fifteen dollars for the Big Pawn plan plants the dwarf SAG we use probably twenty dollars worth maybe the sand was another 20 bucks and you know the solar pump is.
Really the biggest cost for this whole thing but again they're not super super expensive anymore and I'll point you in the right direction if that's the route you want to go if you don't want to use the solar pump you don't have to again something like this if you're going to go this size you don't really need to use anything not really sure how.
Beneficial it really is at the end of the day so yeah guys I think that's pretty much it I hope you enjoyed it I hope this got you motivated to try something like this they're super fun they're super fun I enjoy them a lot and I know you will too so thanks again for watching guys and we'll see you next time.
Thank you
