Acreage Pond Setup

[cap8tin]

I am staying away from a pond for a bit longer but it is possible to have a pond where I live. What I wanted to know is if anyone uses an industrial reverse osmosis unit to provide fresh water to your pond, and if you run the rejected water into the septic field? Do you have an extra large field? Is the water of the large R/O, say you filter out 800 gallons a week, is that water suitable at a medium micron level, say 5 or 10 microns? because I know that highly filtered water is acidic (say 0.5 microns). Than I bet that the pond water can be re used for plants in the garden! Now a person could also have water trucked in and then there is no waste water. Anyway is there anyone who knows about these matters?

It would be cool to have a 3,000 gallon pond, but nice and clean with a medium sized fountain and lights.

[gklaw]

Are you sure you want RO for pond fish ? Not sure if it is good for them.

[mikebike]

I think you don't need to use a RO system.

A large pond filter with a UV lamp and a bio mass filter like is used on this site will handle the waste water.
see the Biological Vegi Filter
Erik’s Swimming Pool to Pond Conversion | kilk.com

A fountain will cause a lot of water loss due to evaporation.

On a side not I filled my 1500 gallon pond today and put in the plants I have been saving for it since spring.
2 red head minnows were in one of the plant baskets so it has it's first fish<G>
I started with a liter of Aqua Plus to remove the chlorine.
I have a 5,000 GPH pump circulating the water and falling back into the pond from 3 foot to aerate it.

Good luck with your pond

[cap8tin]

Sounds cool. A 1,500 gallon pond will grow koi to what size? Where I live the pond has to be large enough for the fish to hibernate in the winter, so it must be at least six feet deep or else it must be heated slightly.

Okay, here is some perspective. In the area, say 40 surrounding acres there was a lot of water this year. In the winter the snow must have left at least several million gallons of water at the surface, and then the spring rain brought in a few million more gallons. I do not know exactly how much water there was, but there is small lakes worth of it, and under the ground there is tons of raw water. A water truck delivers 2,200 gallons of filtered water in for a couple of hundred dollars, so it is cheap to get filtered water.

I would clean the pond and use that water to water a garden, green house, and hedge plants. A large bio filter and a fountain is necessary to keep the bugs and algae away.

I'm not saying that I am going to do it, but it should be a proper and organized development on an acreage, but it would make sense to use an Reverse Osmosis, and the fish are just fine with R.O. water as long as it is not too highly filtered. The R.O. will make the water nice and clear, and prior to the R.O. you can filter the raw water through a system such as an iron filter.

Last thing was that you can let water with chlorine in it sit for a day and the chlorine will evaporate.

[mikebike]

I had to dig my pond 4 ft deep to overwinter my koi and turtles.
it is about 6 ft square in the bottom and 7ft 6 inches square on top.
I plan on making it larger next year but have had enough hand digging for now<G>

I have a 175 gallon fiberglass tub for my Vegi bio filter to be set up later

My largest koi is about 15 inches now

The right combination of fish and plants should prevent algae bloom.

[cap8tin]

I have witnessed a backhoe at work up close and I've tried out forklifts and a bobcat, but the backhoe is the answer. It wouldn't take that long to dig a big pond.

That is a huge koi, and you have turtles, you say. In Alberta the turtles might not make it. I have frogs here, little frogs that jump around on the lawn. I saw another one today.

You know, I have a nice environment on the acreage. Everything looked great this year. Basically I use my aquarium water for plants, and it simply has entered my mind that there is a life cycle that can be developed in order to create a thriving environment. That kind of thinking was on my mind, and fish are very important. They are not just for looking at, but they are a useful or even a critical element for sustaining life. It should ultimately find its place here.

I wasn't so confident when I had found out that they sell industrial reverse osmosis units which would be useful, but there are not any examples of how they are used successfully. It is something that I would consider and it will be up to me to solve all of the issues. I will probably do it later on. I guess that not enough people have them set up on their acreages. My current situation is far from precarious, but I am stuck if I want to wear the larger shoes and go into ponds, etc.

Oh yeah, what I am getting at is that I want to use the pond water. Yes, that is why I need the commercial R.O. system. I want to use hundreds of gallons of the pond water, for plants, than at the same time the water would stay clear, almost like an indoor aquarium. I could even put colored rocks on the bottom, and lights.

[mikebike]

That sounds like a good plan but you will get more result from the straight pond water with it's nutrients in it to water your plants.

You can use the Reverse Osmosis process to use any ground water, rain water or even the waste water from your home to make drinking water.

If you have access to a backhoe they may be able to dig a deep enough hole in the pond area to get down to the ground water table to get a surface water well established which you could then hook up to the RO to clean up the water.

[cap8tin]

Yes, for sure I want to use the pond water since the fish and the filter make the water suitable, but when I do a water change, I want to use R.O. water for replacement water, but it is not easy to produce a lot of it without the commercial system, and if I am using raw water, it first has to be filtered, especially any heavy metals like iron or manganese, but my water is great and I could really have that kind of a setup but the waste water has to be managed and that is why I wondered if anyone has a similar setup and they direct the waste water to a septic field.

The ground water is far below the ground. I could make my pond 20 feet deep if I was insane, right? What does happen however is if the snow melts, if there is a lot of snow, than it takes a long time for the water to sink into the ground, so I might have some surface water from rain, etc, trying to enter a pond without a pond liner. That would mess up the nice clear R.O. water.

It might be a bit of a trick to clean the pond, however it can probably be vacuumed into a cistern, and than you can use a gas water pump to pump the pond water out of the cistern toward your garden. I have done something like this with a basic Honda pump and it will pump the water a good 400 feet no problem with decent output at the end of the hose after traveling that far. I have the 2 inch hose, and not the 3 inch (which uses a bigger water pump).

[BigFatLyre]

You''re in Alberta, somewhere. Your water issues are virtually the opposite of the lower mainland. And I'd walk over to the nearest farmer with a ranch pond and ask him for the local info. and/or call a well company.

FYI: the Koi in the Chinatown garden in Vancouver were well over forty inches long when the long, hot summer smoked them. (thank you, Park Department, for responding to my email two weeks late).

A twenty foot deep "pond" in Alberta is normal. Also, watch for soil/earth toxicity. Once again., talk to a local cattleman. They'll know.

So one poses the question: WHERE in "Alberta" might thy be, oh pilgrim? There's a slight difference in pond management between Whitecourt and Pincher Creek.

[cap8tin]

What actually happened this year is that the rain was able to provide 80% of the water for the garden. I have only watered it one time manually. What you described sounds like a natural pond. I would not want one of them too close to the house because of all of the insects, but sure, you can have fish in some of them if they are fairly deep but those fish wouldn't be so much for viewing.

What I would like to have is a pond just deep enough but one that is very well maintained in the warm months. It might be a fourteen feet long and seven feet deep on one of the sides. There has to be a solution for the water however, because that is the primary question. Can R.O. waste water be recycled? That is the type of question that I need answered.

I would be trying to improve the situation here, and it goes beyond having fish. I would have to have production value, I want greener grass, and faster growing trees and hedges because there is an ecosystem being nurtured with the use of modern technology.