Due to life changes we have sold our house and no longer have the koi pond. I hope the new owners will discover the joy and happiness that we enjoyed through the years. 

So far this 2007 season is proving to be eventful. The frog pond waterfall has been rebuilt a couple of times already. The liner underneath needed replacing. Hopefully this fixes the leak for good. A new 7,500 GPH pump now drives the waterfall. It's quite impressive.

Our 2006 pond season was very nice and fairly uneventful. A new filter system was added including a large UV clarifier. You can see more info in the Setup section of this site.

Lots of koi babies in 2006. We also bought a few from Hanover Koi to increase the yellows and blues in the pond.

We are wrapping up our major pond expansion project (much later than we had anticipated). We now have three ponds and  two waterfalls supplied by two Sequence 750 series external pumps with a total flow rate of approximately 6400 gallons per hour. The koi pond tripled in size and should provide a much better environment. A new pump house was built to house the external pumps and a new electric panel with four GFI circuit breakers.

The expansion project has been filled with many trials and tribulations including a collapse of one of the new ponds that was housing all of our koi at the time. I also was bitten by a poisonous spider which caused me to become very ill for a couple weeks. Needless to say, we are glad that the project is almost complete.

Over the winter I thought long and hard about doing a pond expansion/overhaul this spring. After much debate (with my wife) and consideration we have decided to go ahead with it. The plan is to triple the size of the two existing ponds and we will hopefully have it completed in early June. 

Another wonderful pond season is wrapping up. This is always a hard time of the year for us, but we just start looking forward to next spring.

We are taking a few extra precautions this year to ensure that the koi make it through the winter safely. A floating heater will be used above the koi refuge area and an air pump will be used near the skimmer opening to keep it from freezing.

We just completed some major work on the upper pond. Over the past several years the pond edges had settled and needed to be built-up in several places.

This also lead to a complete re-build of the top half of the waterfall. The short stream became a second small waterfall near the outlet of the upper pond. We are extremely pleased with how it turned out. 

This winter was a cold one and the last few weeks were especially bad. When the ice thawed we were devastated to find that all of our large koi were dead. We are heartbroken.

We had an incredible year with our pond.  The koi spawned in late summer and we enter the winter with at least 20 baby koi. Fingers crossed that they will make it to next spring.

A few new pictures were uploaded today.

We won auctions for two water lilies yesterday on Ebay. Pictures from the auction can be found on the new Our Pond Plants page.

There are also pictures on the new Our Pond Plants page of some of the other lilies we have on order from Hawaiian Watergardens.

We had to replace one of the pumps in the skimmer this week because the old one quit working. The good news is that the new pump (Pondmaster WFP1700) has a much greater flow rate than the old; the waterfall is very lively now.

A few new pictures were uploaded today.

Three koi did not make it through the winter. We are convinced that the blue heron spotted around the neighborhood had something to do with their disappearance.

We adopted a new green frog from a local nursery last weekend. They said if I could catch him I could have him.....  Got him!

The filter is back in place and the pond is crystal clear. We did have a good crop of string algae for a few weeks, but it seems to be slacking off.

We have been fighting a few leaks around the edges of the top pond. As things settle we keep finding spots that the water escapes before going down the stream.

We used the 'Muc-Vac' with limited success to do a little spring cleaning in the pond. Our water pressure may not be strong enough for an effective cleaning.

Spring is finally upon us and things are starting to wake up. We cleaned out the skimmer this weekend and started working on the landscape around the pond. We have fed the koi several times over the past few weeks and they are becoming more active.

We also added another 1000 pounds of stone to the wall surrounding the upper pond this weekend. MB is very pleased with how it turned out. You can see the upgraded wall in the new pictures we just posted.

Things have been going very well the past couple of weeks. The water is clear and the Koi seem happy. The two lilies have scaled back their growth since we re-potted them. I have a feeling they were stressed a bit by the process.

I was lucky enough to get a few pictures of the little frog that has made a home of our pond. He sings to us every day and provides a challenge for us to try and spot him.

In-pond and out-of-pond lighting is now in place. There are four spotlights outside of the pond lining the front (long) edge and two underwater lights adding some accent lighting effects. It took a few tries to get the lighting to look the way we wanted. Check out some night-time pictures.

The first water condition tests were done with the new test kit. Everything looks good, we are pleased with the results.

The filter system installation is finally complete. The United Pump UP-900-S was installed to power the Bioforce filter since the Little Giant pump was too much for it. The little Giant output now goes directly into the upper pond. The waterfall shows a definite increase in water flow.

Pictures of the new landscaping were added.

We worked on getting some landscaping done around the ponds today. They look much more at home now. 

We had a great time at the Mid-Atlantic Koi show today. The best part was getting the chance to meet several of the forum members!

There was one Koi hatchery in particular (I think they were called "Blue Ridge") that had very good looking Koi at reasonable prices. I finally convinced Mary Beth to come out to the show and by the time she got there I already had picked out 3 Koi! MB picked out a 4th and home we went. They seem to be adjusting well to the new pond.

Some pictures of the new Koi have been added to the pictures page

The new PSA PondSweep PS301P was installed today. This should do a better job of skimming the pond surface and provides a pre-filter before the pump since the pump now sits inside the skimmer instead of on the bottom of the pond.

I decided to order a new skimmer today after reading some posts on the Pond Chat forum. The new unit will be built in to the deep end of the pond and will work in a similar manner to the skimmers found in swimming pools.

I also found that the Little Giant pump I have is too strong for the BioForce filter. I ordered a new pump that will work with the filter and will use the stronger pump to directly feed the waterfall.

The filter was hooked up today and the pond water was treated for chlorine. Also, chemicals were added to give the filter a head start in bacteria production.

I also hooked up the NurseryPro pond skimmer today. It's a little stand alone unit that took me a while to figure out. At this point, I'm not sure if I like it. 

We made great progress today! The upper pond was dug out and the liner installed. The waterfall was tested and the stream was built. 

The best news of all..... We filled the ponds with water! 

There are some pictures on the Pond Construction page.

Most of the day was spent designing the waterfall and trying to decide what to do with the upper pond. We are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel!  

Mary Beth and I took the day off today to try and move the pond project along. We added more roofing felt and then put the pond underlay in place. Man, it was so hot out today. The underlay got so hot it scalded our hands. Once the underlay was in place we installed the pond liner. There was enough extra in the width to reach up to the top of where the waterfall will be.

At this point I thought we were stuck. The next step was to start moving the huge rocks into place for the waterfall foundation. I figured there was no way MB could help move these giant boulders, but she was determined to try it. We had to set it down several times on the way, but in the end we got the biggest rock in place. The rest of them seemed easy after that one. The waterfall is starting to take shape!

Pictures from today's activities have been uploaded to the Pond Construction page showing our progress.. 

The pond liner finally arrived. We can now move forward with the pond construction. I started lining the lower pond with roofing felt to create the first line of defense between the rocky soil and the pond liner. 

I was very disappointed to find that both pieces of the liner underlay that was sent to us was shorted by 9 feet. This has been a very frustrating experience. 

The final shipment of boulders was delivered today..... ugh! more rocks!!

We have been waiting for over 4 weeks for our pond liner to arrive. The project is on hold until it does. The original liner we ordered could not be sent due to problems at the manufacturer. There was a mix-up at the warehouse, so the replacement liner we ordered sat for ten days before it was shipped. This has been very frustrating for us.

Since our last update we realized we did not have enough dirt to create the top pond. We had 10 cubic yards of topsoil dumped on our driveway and have been busy carting it back to the pond. 

We have also ordered another load of boulders to be delivered that will be used on the perimeters of the ponds. We are so tired of dirt and rocks! Will this project ever end?

Stone (almost 5000 ponds of it) is delivered on pallets to our driveway. Digging continues, started building the wall for the upper pond

Stone for the wall and waterfall are ordered.  Digging continues

Supplies are ordered from justliners.com.  Digging continues