Rolo's Mini Ocean

Well, Happy New year. Starting 2015 of with a bang.

Good news, Pond build is still moving along.

Bad News, Taking a step backwards in the aquarium world.

DIY overflow failure in the refugium caused an overflow of water in the fish room AKA bedroom closet. Cleaned that mess up quick. Then draining the refugium (called away by the needy children) overflow of the sump. Cleaned up that mess. Go to bed 2am start thinking I better check everything. Notice a crack in the sump at the bulkhead. It wasn't leaking so I went back to bed. 5:30 am drained the sump completely. shut off filtration and went to work. The lights and the power heads were up and running. At work made a plan to temporarily fix the issue until I get a better handle on all this.

Do I sell external pump and get a submersible?
Do I buy another 55G and glass to rebuild the sump?
Should I just get an acrylic sump made since I have two 48 x 48 x .5" thick acrylic in the garage?
Going to drill the 45G refugium and build the drain properly. (what I get for being cheap and lazy)

What I've done so far is contact a local company for a quote with drawings of the sump and cut plans for the acrylic.
Researched Waveline DC 12000 submersible pumps.
Still on the fence on what to do!

Meanwhile, the pond I've been busy building the waterfall box, took the lid and made it into a fake boulder, tracked down a place to get the rock, taped into the sprinkler to make it easier to refill the pond, and started the plumbing on the waterfall box.
I plan on using four Matala Filter Pads, laid in the box from high density to low density.
adding a wall on one side of the box for bio balls with a fine filter pad before the bio balls.

 

Here's what the pond currently looks like on 12/31/14 65º temp outside. LOL

 

Here is what the beautiful sump room currently looks like.

 

Pond is looking nice. It's cold and raining here. :-( Boy you got your hands into a couple projects. Lucky women! A man that likes to build things that hold water is hard to find.

 

Love your pond Rolo. It will be nice to see it all setup and running. I'm surrounded by evergreens a pond round me would succumb to needles plugging it up real quick.

 

Thank you. There is always a way around needles plugging up a pump. I can't wait till mine is all done. My only worry here is the blue heron and the hawks..... We'll see how that goes.

 

Very cool Rolo. I have a koi pond that I built right outside of my home office so I can hear the waterfall running on days I can open the windows.

As far as the heron and hawks you will need to do something to keep them out. Within the first days of pond being up and fish in a heron ate my first $50.00 fish. I actually have a net over the top to keep them out(also helps with the racoons and other critters). Last year something had got on the net and it was all torn up so I took it off(had not seen birds in year plus), within a day a blue heron got another fish.

You can use lawn art, or pond critters, or nets to keep the birds out. Statues of Blue Heron will keep other herons out. You can also put 1 of those fake gators in pond should work. As far as the net people think oh a net must take away from the beauty.. not so bad at all especially when you have some $50.00 fish.

Most of the koi I get are $10 to $20 3" to 6" depending. The ones 6" to 8" are usually $50

Make sure you find a place selling true koi.. Don't just go pick some up at petco ha ha. Koi are so beautiful.

 

That's what I'm worried about. But I did plan on putting a fake owl up there on the pergola. I also thought that a fake gator would be a fun prank on the wife... LOL Didn't know it would keep critters away. Things to consider for sure. Thanks for the advice. I'll be starting off with the cheap fish first.

 

True, true.
There are ways to fix everything, I guess when you get right down to the brass tax, it's about how much effort I want to put into it. As much as I've thought about a pond (even have a very old one in place already) there's to many horror stories from friends about the upkeep and the critter situation for me to give it a try. Who knows though, there must be a reason I haven't tore that old one out of the ground yet.