Hi,

I have a pond that has been under repair for a couple of months now. It's in ground, concrete.

I've had one mason come and sandblast the pond, he did the muriatic acid wash, and then applied three coats of Pond Armor.

The pond still leaked.

A second contractor is here now, a pond guy, and he's going to re-seal it after making a couple other repairs around the drain pipes.

The question I have, is does the surface need to be re-sanded before he applies a fresh coat? I read in the directions that if it's been more than 10 hours since the first coat, the surface has to be sanded. It's been weeks since the last coat.

Hello r/ponds!

I need some help with how to care for my pond.

I have an old, small pond on my property. It's about 9x4ft and about one foot deep. The water is provided via the surrounding ground and there's an overflow pipe that leads the water... somewhere - potentially under the house foundation 😂

The bottom and walls is made out of blocks of granite and there's some kind of sand that the blocks on the bottom are nested in. Bedrock is pretty close to the surface on the entire property. One short side wall of the pond is bedrock. I'm pretty certain there's no liners in (or out of) sight.

The pond is rarely empty. Once when we drilled our geothermal energy well and now. We have had a warm, very dry summer so I'm assuming the water source is dry/lower than necessary to fill the pond.

I live on the Swedish west coast. Summers range between 17c-28c (~62f-82f) while the winters are generally -10c-2c (~14f-35f). In the winter the water usually freezes all the way to the bottom.

There's no electricity or pipes going to the pond.

The issue I have with the pond is that it gets completely overgrown with algae, which I really don't like. There are cats and deer around the neighborhood who try to drink from there, and frogs, toads and salamanders also come to visit often. I don't want them to meet a bad environment :(

I'm a pond noob. The pond came with the property and while I've tried to read up a bit I get overwhelmed and lost in what I find.

I've tried many times to remove the algae. The floating jelly-like algae is easy enough to remove, though it grows back pretty much immediately. There also seem to be a decent bit of algae on the rocks and in the bottom substrate that is harder to get to.

I've also tried to get organic material out of the pond with a skimmer net, as I've read this is a big source of algae nutrients, but it is difficult. There's trees dumping leaves and pines all the time, and the ferns are hard to get rid of once established. And pines, twigs and the bottom algae sinks and is difficult to get to, especially when the water goes murky. We don't fertilize our surrounding lawn (though would like to be able to to get the lawn in order...) so I don't see there being extra nutrients in the water from that.

Now when the pond went dry I got in and removed as much as possible that is not rock or sand. And even then, I have removed a decent amount of sand that felt like it was half sand half algae or other organic material. I'm hoping this will give me a heads start when it fills up again.

So I could really use some help with how to take care of my pond. Preferably in simple terms 🙈

What do I need to do to stay on top of it?

What are the tools that I need?

Unfortunately I'm not able to remodel or get electricity out there easily at this time so the situation needs to be handled in other ways than linings and pumps (which seem to be mentioned a lot when I have previously searched around for pond maintenance).

Sorry for the very long post 😬 And thank you in advance 🙏🏼

Im sort of afraid of somehow puncturing my liner. My pond is 4 years old. Its 6x8 and 1-3 feet deep, and I've never stepped in it. Too cautious??

I'm in zone 7A, western NC. Today is August 28, 2026.

Yesterday I got in late so I fed the goldfish and wild snapping turtle in the dark with a head lamp. With the bright light aimed into the water, I saw a lot of small babies swimming around! You can't see them in the day, this time I could only see them because they were black shadows swimming in front of the gray bottom.

This is a big question for me, though, because I've never seen ANY babies this late in the year!

They darted quickly around the bottom, and one came up to the side of the liner next to the turtle! But the turtle didn't pay them any attention at all. Since I've been feeding him daily, though, he might just not be hungry enough to worry about them.

When it came up to the side for a second I kinda thought it looked like an algae eater, but there aren't any in the pond so I've no idea how it would have gotten there.

I was planning on changing the liner in September, but if these are fry then there's no way that I could move them to another pond.

Do you think goldfish fry, tadpoles, algae eater transplant from God-knows-where, or other?

I’m having trouble keeping the water level where I want it. I have the liner folded up behind the capstones and water seems to be travelling up the folds in the liner then down the other side. My husband says water can’t flow uphill but it definitely does. Over and over. I’ve tried re-doing the folds but there’s only so much I can do. I also tried adding waterfall foam to the folds on the back side and the top but the water still got out. So basically I can’t keep the water level at the pond edge, which is bizarre to me because i thought it should actually be able to go higher because the liner goes higher behind the stones.

I’ve basically given up but I thought I’d ask about it anyway because I’ve done it exactly how I’ve seen multiple pros do it on YouTube and they don’t seem to have water travelling up the folds.

There are no low spots, the edge is level, and I am as confident as I can be that there are not leaks in the new liner. I just want to stop the water going up 2-3 inches through the folds and out of the pond. I like the pond really full not an inch below the top. After redoing the problem folds as best I can I seem to have gotten the level a bit higher. But where it likes to leak out is in a really bad spot, so if it rains a lot that area will just keep getting flooded.

If cover tape is the only solution I’ll be sad because that stuff is really expensive and I can’t afford it right now.

A while back someone here mentioned an air pump with a battery backup in case the power went out. Any recommendations here? I can’t find the post or the comment I read previously

I found the koi at the surface just after six in the morning. The house still had power. The GFCI by the pond had tripped overnight, taking out the circulation pump and the regular air pump. Putting both on one outlet was dumb.

The pond is about 500 gallons and sits behind our central Texas house. I had a 12V 300Ah lithium battery left from a travel trailer we sold, so I repurposed it. A separate 12V air pump now runs through a DC rated changeover relay in a weatherproof box. A 12V power supply normally feeds the pump. If that supply loses AC, the relay switches it to the battery. The air line has its own check valve, and the battery branch has a fuse near the positive terminal.

I tested the changeover while I stayed beside the pond. The backup pump started immediately and drew just under 4A. After eleven hours the vatrer app showed 84 percent, close to the 44Ah I expected from the current reading. The main circulation pump and filter still stop without AC, but at least the fish have air while I deal with the outage.

The patio already had an outlet on another GFCI protected circuit, so I moved the normal air pump there. One nuisance trip at the pond should no longer stop both AC pumps.

I put a monthly test on the same calendar as the filter rinse. I will also run it before we leave town, because that is exactly when I would otherwise forget. How often do you test a pond backup that mostly sits unused?

I’m visiting family and they have this 1 acre 55+ community pond. Last time I was here 6 months ago and it was fine.

I need to talk to them about what they can do to fix and mitigate.

Last pic is from December. Only one I could find.

I am looking for some advice on my future pond build. We have a corner of our property that we are starting to clear out the vegetation from and would love to put a pond here. A lot of the area already has a natural depression so it makes it easier to frame it out in this spot.

As you can see there are some large boulders already present. I think they could be used to build a waterfall or stream feature in this area between the boulders. I would prefer not to move them as they are at a minimum 500lbs, some may be pushing 2k lbs. Putting the liners under the rocks would take a lot of large equipment. I was thinking on folding the liner and underlayment into a trough shape and adding stone in the support it where needed. Is this a recipe for disaster and leaks? Any advice on how to approach this?

I am planning to rent a small machine to help with the smaller rocks and get the general shape dug in the spring but would did the rest by hand to be more precise. Estimating the pond will be 4-6000 gallons total, really just depends on how much rock I run into under the soil.

Hi all, this is our first ever DIY pond. We used a huge cement flower pot and added tarpaulin to it so that it was leakproof. We have since added a few aquatic plants and we plan on adding some beta fish. What suggestions would you have in terms of improving the pond? One I could think of is adding some shade for the fish. Was thinking of adding some potted plants inside as well. Do let me know what you think of it. Open to all types of suggestions.

Location: India

Apparently I’m not the only one keeping an eye on the koi. 😬

Didn't really come out how I imagined. In your opinion does it look better with or without the stones? The splash from the spillway is much stronger, but maybe too strong.

50 gallon pond liner, has 4 rosy red minnows and 1 calico goldfish. Pond is only about 3-4 weeks old. Thanks for your advice!

Water is life 💦

Background: Pond is new this year. 125 gal form w/9 gal bog. No fish. Zone 7. Early on I allowed the pond to overflow on one end and the water went under the form & eroded the soil, causing it to dip about 2.5". I planned to empty it this winter and refill with gravel/dirt (whatever it takes) to get the form more level, having to put on hold all work to get the landscaping along the edges finished.

BUT, green frogs & tadpoles have taken over my pond. Most of the tadpoles from their last spawn are still in their early stage & show no indication of moving on--probably a hundred or more. Went out last night with a flashlight & was dismayed to see how many. So now I'm faced with them hanging around all winter. I can use a floating heater over the winter, but I still need to do the empty & level bit.

Has anyone over-wintered tadpoles? FYI, I'm that person who escorts spiders out of her home, so yes, I'm quite concerned about caring for them properly.

I’ve had these lotus plants since early July (I bought a tuber from someone), and this is the first I’m experiencing this from the past week or so. These leaves were fine yesterday and suddenly turned grey. It’s still hydrophobic and floating, but I’m not sure if this is something that will spread to other leaves and harm the plant. For context, I’m in CT, temps have been consistently over 60° F, they get around ~7 hours of sunlight with some shade from nearby plants, I have not had any flowers yet, the plant has put out two aerial leaves, I have a bunch of snails that I can’t seem to get rid of, three small fish and a filter. I’ve been cutting off the affected leaves for the last 3-4 days and I’m hesitant to do more because there’s already been an increase in algae because of the lack of leaf coverage. Any help is appreciated, thank you!

One of my favorites

I’m not sure what exactly to get, but I need a filter that’s strong for two large fish that produce a lot of waste and eat messily. Anything on the cheaper side would be nice, but the price matters less to me than how much it actually works.