I am proud of my new pond
If I do say so myself, I am proud of my new pond. The major work took more than eight months to complete. It consists of six bins. Three that can be seen outside and three that will serve as a mechanical/biological filter inside.
The pond has the shape of a half moon. The top point, in the shape of a sickle, is separated from the large pond by a wall that is under water. There will also be water plants and one at the back side is a sickle of double size and depth, which will later, when the water is suitable, contain large water plants and a number of fish that you prefer to keep separate.
This part is again separated by a wall from the lower larger pond, in which fish can swim, but where nothing else comes in, except the madman himself for maintenance and a closer look (especially cooling) at the fish.
So far I have about a hundred guppies descended from some guppies we got and bought for a few baht. Also about ten zebra danios and a few algae eaters… all fish that can live well in soft to hard water.
But because I have a lot of space, I want to have large schools of fish. No big fish. In addition, there must be aquatic plants that can tolerate a lot of light and that can grow in hard water. I have done research on various sites on the internet and compiled a database.
Thailand's largest fish market
However, here in the vicinity of Pranburi and Hua Hin there is not really much to be found. I have already bought some stuff in the aquarium shop in Hua Hin (near the railway) and read that there are also fish for sale at the night market.
There is a shop in Pranburi, but it sells very few things that are of interest to me. There is also the largest fish market in Thailand at Ratchaburi. However, I do not know how to reach it by public transport. Last week I checked on YouTube and saw that at Chatuchak in Bangkok there would be a department where you could buy everything. And I visited it yesterday.
Pratunam market
We drove to Bangkok on Saturday and because I also wanted to be in Panthip Plaza and I know a clean, relatively cheap hotel nearby, we stayed there overnight.
My friend Aom was eager to go to Pratunam Market. There she could buy nice clothes for less than 1000 baht. I also searched and bought, size XXL - which was still too narrow for me. It was a Thai size XXL, because normally size 36 fits me. Anyway, my brother-in-law will be delighted.
We leisurely strolled through that market for two hours. Luckily it wasn't too hot and my girlfriend was successful with the shopping. After checking out of our hotel, we took the Skytrain to Chatuchak.
Chatuchak
Weekend market. We mainly walked past the fish, you get beaten to death with them. One store after another. You get everything and much more. I've seen fish I've never heard of. Hundreds of species. Aquariums, plants, wood, backgrounds, filters, pumps, everything you can use with an aquarium. Cooling elements to cool the water during the hot season.
The animals that are sold there are incredible. White turtles! Worms, insects, all kinds of birds, snakes, lizards, dogs, cats, rabbits and all accessories. In short, it was simply too much for me to make a choice at all. It was interesting, but we felt crushed by the multiplicity.
We had lunch in the food court of a shopping mall located there. There was also a large store that sold everything possible for aquarium and terrarium enthusiasts.
In the end I bought a few aquatic plants, which can also grow in hard water. I may buy the next generation of fish there after all, as soon as the water in the pond has reached the correct kH and pH value and the plants grow properly and filter the water.
I'll take an early bus to Bangkok next time and then spend a few hours at that market picking out what I want. Then I have no overnight luggage with me and can easily take everything with me. Apparently the (fish) market is also open during the week. It will be less busy then.
Here's a YouTube video, made not long ago. It gives a small impression of the market.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdZ_Pu1WP6A[/embedyt]
Dear Jack,
nice that you shared your gigantic pond with us, I also have a pond in my garden here in Holland.
If I were you I wouldn't worry so much about the hardness of the water and all those other additional things, my proposition is try for yourself which plants grow best, this also applies to the fish, because don't forget the trade only wants but selling things to you, but also in nature there are large fluctuations in the water.
The condition of the water has to do with so many causes that you cannot change all of them manually, let nature take its course.
Unless you really spend capital on fish and plants, of course, but then you take a risk anyway that it will still be a fiasco with the right PH and KH.
good luck and have fun Rob
Hello Sjaak,
great story both your pond and the chatuchak market in bangkok.
When we are back in Hua Hin at the beginning of December we will make an appointment and come and see your masterpiece.
Greetings,
Matt and Magda
Hey Matt,
Thank you for your comment. Of course you can definitely come and visit us! Bring a piece of crumble pie with you! haha.
An acquaintance claimed that in the Chatachut market, in addition to the white turtles mentioned, there are also blue turtles?
On Wikipedia I can't find any information about blue turtles and with images there are, in addition to toy images, three images of turtles that do have a slightly blue appearance.
Is this a fabrication?
Hello, I am also planning to have a fish pond with waterfall installed in Petchabun or do it myself. Where can I go to do this work and if not how did you make the pond. Thanks. Patrick
Be careful with concrete ponds that are new, they must first leach out, otherwise all your new fish will go to fish heaven within a few days.
gr
ronny
Hi Patrick,
You could ask a builder if you don't want to do it yourself. I started at the time like with everything: a first small step. I just started digging and the only one limiting me was my dear wife, who didn't want the pond too big.
I've worked with concrete and those big concrete bricks that have three big holes in them. I always mix the cement with a binder that makes the cement waterproof. Then plastered, again with waterproof cement and then covered with a sealant that could seal everything (from Crocodile) and then again a water-based, water-repellent paint layer.
The pond is now three years old. I had one leak, which luckily I was able to fix easily.
I found my information on YouTube. Everything about building ponds, preparing cement or concrete and so on…
Of course my pond isn't perfect and I made some mistakes that are hard to correct… but all in all I'm proud of it… especially now after three years!
We have 2 ponds, 1 of which is 40×50 meters and about 6 meters deep, hundreds of koi carp of almost 70 centimeters swim in it, in the garden we have a smaller pond of about 5 meters in diameter and 80 centimeters deep in which a few hundred smaller koi carp swim .
Both ponds are in the sun and have never seen a meter or something like that for the Ph etc..
When you start doing that, remember that you get a capital pond and the additions according to the regulations are never enough.
If the koi carp can reach the plants, you hardly need to feed them anymore because the koi carp see your precious plants as food and will have them bald in no time. If they can't reach it, then you indeed have a perfect filter and you probably don't need a UV lamp or another filter anymore.
Incidentally, on the way to the Chatuchak you passed a super large fishmonger, namely the one in Ratchaburi ..http://www.fishvillagemarket.com/ ……https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1R89Cp1I0o.
Good luck and have fun with your pond.
Hello Hank,
Awesome! Unfortunately I don't have much room for ponds that size. Yes, I have heard about the market in Ratchaburi and I have also seen videos on Youtube. I definitely want to go there again!
Good advice first quarantine all new fish for about three weeks, I have already bought hundreds of fish on this market and previously millions from exporters from Thailand and again and again large numbers are sick, the reason is the transport, this weakens the fish so much that all annoying diseases manifest themselves while there is nothing to see about the fish on the spot. Especially watch out in the bags with hundreds of fish lying along the street side, they have just caught them from the ponds and have already spent hours in the back in the sun in a pickup located and are then quickly sold for a small price.
My experience and that is one of importer and exporter of fish all over the world, so that can certainly count.
you can always send me an email for info [email protected]
gr
ronny
Hi Ronnie,
Thank you for your good advice. The story above is already three years old… I commented further down… The fish and the pond are doing well!
Regards,
Sjaak
I also have a natural pond and an above ground pond. The natural pond, a 1000m² in size with a maximum depth of 1.5m, there is no need to worry about it… nature does its job….
The above-ground one is not as big as the one in this article, but it cannot be called a "little one". The above-ground pond contains 8000l of water and is 60cm deep. The bottom consists of sand. As plants mainly Lotus and Kabomba. Should have actually built it more for the lotus flowers.
At the start-up, the pond was filled with rainwater coming from the roof. Rainwater is naturally soft and slightly acidic. To eliminate the adverse effect of the cement (plastering), my Thai neighbour, retired professor of agriculture, advised me to put pieces of the trunk of a banana plant in the water for a few weeks, which I did.
After three weeks, with the self-built filters in service, the lotus plants, in large pots with the accompanying gray mud, were placed in the pond.
After a month, the first fish, yes, Guppys, received from a friend, were released into the pond…. no deaths… so that was good. Afterwards, some other species, small fish, were purchased and they are also doing very well. Have regular breeding which far exceeds the deaths (you sometimes have that there is a dead fish). I will not talk about breeding Guppys because they are not called “million fish” for nothing …. that is almost weekly that there are added, will eventually also have to give away.
The water is not checked for hardness or anything. He evaporated water is simply compensated with rainwater. There is a natural balance, the lotus plants are, after three years, still the original ones and the kabomba came by itself… (probably came along with the lotus plants).
The only thing I have to keep under control are the green thread algae, but this is not a problem at all and even indicates that the water quality is good.
The self-built filter is a two-stage filter of which the first stage, a coarse filter, contains gravel and sand. The second stage is sand and mostly charcoal. The charcoal is in bags which are used to machine wash delicate laundry. The sand is in women's nylon stockings ( ha ha ha ). The pump has a flow rate of 80l/min and filtering for 3 hours a day is more than enough, the water is so clear that you can see a pin on the bottom.
Every day I do my morning observation round and then manually remove the thread algae if necessary. Little or no worry about all this.
The story of my pond is at least two years old. My pond has already undergone a few changes. Roughly speaking, he's still the same. I have a large number of fish that have been in it from the start and really just natural mortality. A koi was pecked out by a bird and my wife once threw half a loaf of bread into the pond, which killed a fish, which gorged itself on it.
I have hardly any algae in the pond where the fish swim. In the meantime I have bought a good "pond vacuum cleaner" and with it I will suck the rubbish from the bottom of the pond once or twice a week. I just let the water run into the garden. Good for the plants! By the time I'm done, the water level has dropped about ten centimeters and fresh water just comes back in through the tap. I have connected a tap with a water stop, so that the water is always at the same level.
I no longer check the water. There is enough oxygen coming in through waterfalls I made, the water is just hard, but as mentioned above, you eventually adjust your plants. For example, I can't grow a water lily. Not because the water is bad, but because the fish eat it (or maybe both). But I have found a number of plants (including papyrus) that grow well.
My pumps run from 7 am to 10 pm. It costs me about 1000 baht a month, but oh well, it's beautiful.
I am now busy dressing the edge of the pond with boulders. I had already raised it about 10 centimeters, but that was just not enough. The paint also started to flake off and I decided to put these stones on the edge with waterproof cement. As a result, it can now sometimes blow and rain without me having to worry that the fish will go over the edge. That's happened to me before!
I also expanded the filter. At first I had three tanks, but added a fourth, the bottom of which is about the same height as that of the pond. This is to prevent the pump from running dry.
My original UV lamp broke after only a few months and I never replaced it. The water of the pond is clean and clear through my filter system and the plants.
The intention of the pond was to also use it as a swimming pond. My experience now is that although it is wonderful to cool off in the pond, you cannot swim for three reasons: the pond is too small at eight meters, the edge is just a little too low (I move a lot of water with my arms ) and especially the fish… The critters are so used to me, they see me as a food source… they swim too close to me and although they are fast, I have accidentally kicked a fish a few times…
I always have to feed them before I float in the water. Then I have the water in front of me for about ten minutes without them starting on me hahaha….
So now I started with a small pool behind the house… but that's another story. I'm going to do that all by myself and I've been digging every day for a month now... to cool off in the pond afterwards!
Dear Jack,
everything seems to be going well with the pond there… yes, the bigger the easier of course.
As for the pumps: 1000THB/m, ok it's not the end of the world and you get something nice in return. But have you ever thought about powering those pumps with solar energy? Here with me, the original intention was to also feed the pump with solar energy. In my case, however, it was not profitable, but at 1000THB/m it could be profitable and it is a nice technical project by the way.
As can be read in my response: I barely have to filter 3h/d. I didn't know that at first, of course... was waiting and seeing what was really needed. In the rainy season, however, I have to filter even less, not even for several days, because at that time I drain water from the pond, bottom water, and top up with the fallen rainwater.
My pump is 350W/h ... so I barely have a consumption of well 1 kW/d ... let's say at 6THB/kWh that is an average of 200 to max 300THB/m and I can't handle that with solar panels.
But for an additional consumption of 1000THB/m it pays to agree on the bill. Since you consume 15h/d of energy and therefore have an additional cost of 1000THB/m, this means that your pumps are of low power: 1000/30= about 35THB/d … 35/15(h) = about small 300W/h..
So you don't need a big installation of solar panels… I estimate 4m² of solar panels, an inverter, two traction batteries and a converter 12/220V. If you look around a bit you can certainly get this for around 30.000THB… I considered it as a “project” but it was, as I wrote, not profitable in my case, so better use this 30.000THB for another project.
Great, thanks for your explanation. I will definitely look into solar panels. In fact, I had bought a pump via Lazada with a solar panel some time ago. I was very disappointed with the size of the pump. It meant almost nothing. I did get two pumps for the price of one.
That came in handy, because a while ago I accidentally cut the cable of one pump. Now I could replace it!
For 30.000 Baht it is worth it… then I would have taken the money out after three years.
I have now saved your contribution to my PC…
Regards,
Sjaak