What To Use For A Duck Pond And How To Keep It Clean??????

Think very seriously about building in a drain.  My ducks put a couple inches of mud and muck into the bottom of their pond every week.  Pumping that dry enough to clean out with a pump is easier said than done.

 

I trenched in a 2" drain pipe running down hill from the pond before I put in the pond.  40 feet of two foot deep trench was a lot of work, but I am happy I did it every time I open the valve and drain the pond.  All I have to do is wait for it to drain and then shovel out the remaining muck.  Anything other than a heavy duty chopper pump would choke on the muck, which means that I would not be able to pump out all the water, which would make cleaning out the solids nearly impossible.

 

It cannot be overstated that ducks will completely crap up any container of water that you give them in a very short time.

Our duckpond is only a dog-digged hole under a plumtree, and moles make drains in it, which are quite easy to manage - either stomp on it to close, or suppress the hole by punching down. And the lake is bigger and bigger everyday - ducks are very good in excavating, and after all, it is their pond, not mine, so it is completely right that they work on it (with other animals, like in a fairytale). 

 

Because their legs and beaks get very (and I mean VERY) muddy sometimes in the hard work of pulling out earthworms and filtering mudsoup I always have them a babytub of clean water near where they can wash off. Someday maybe they will have a real pond too.

I'm also interested in how to drain larger pond. Right now I have a baby pool but I want to dig something but I really need to know how to maintain it easily

We use a livestock water tank, 50 gallon size for our ducks, but they come larger.  To clean it, we have an electric pump that connects to a hose and we pump the waste out beyond our yard.  We just pop it in when we need it. It doesn't take long and it works like a charm.  

Many have seen our pond project on other threads on this site but we used a baby pool for the first few months and then I was talking with our landscape friend and he decided to build us a pond as my bride has breast cancer and he thought this would also be therapeutic.  All and all we ended up with a 600 gallon pond with two waterfalls and a combined skimmer and bottom vacuum filter.  We seem to have no issues with keeping it cleam but we only have two Pekin's at this time.  We will be inoculating the pond with Microbe-Lift/PL from Ecological Laboratories to set up a natural bio-system to keep it clean too.  In phase III there will be a gravity drain installed that will have a hose nozzle at the end for easy drainage and cleaning (likley semi-annually) and we clean the filters weekly by simply hosing them off and hosing off the pea gravel that is the secondary filter (takes about 20 min total).  Good luck with your project!

We built a pond for our 4 geese. First we excavated a 8' diameter hole 2 1/2 feet deep with a shallow area 1 foot wide on one side. We installed a rubber pond liner and put sone flat granite rocks around the edge to define the edge. Beyond the rocks we covered any remaining pond liner with river stone. I have a pump that I pump water from a brook on my property. I run the water daily to clean the pond. I do not have a drain I use an overflow with another piece of pond liner that guides the overflow water to an area where it goes back into the ground. We have very sandy soil here so there is no problem with water standing. The river stones surrounding the pond keep it cleaner as the geese do not have a chance to load it with muck. The only time it is very dirty is when the geese are molting and feathers get all over the surface. The goose in the last picture is standing in the shallow part. The overflow was put at the edge of the pond shown at the top of the second picture. It is a shallow trench lined with pond liner with a large flat rock that the water flows out under and down the lined trench. I got the pond liner used but in excellent condition on craigslist.

Edited by Brookliner - 7/22/12 at 4:31pm

I'm gonna post here because I'd also want to know what the poster wants to know. I'd love to make a waterfall for my bigger flock of ducks... I just don't know how to do all that stuff. Right now they have an empty pond, it's pretty large, 10 ft by 6 ft I think? Maybe bigger, anyways it's cemented and there's pond liner under the cement. I'm thinking of making it smaller.. I have one of those black plastic ones you can get from hardware stores. Mine is from Home Depot and it's pretty big. I'm definitely gonna put the pond in and refill the ground, but I would love a filter and all that fancy stuff the other poster has. I do have an electric water pump but a filter system for the pound sounds better, plus my ducks would be happier and I wouldn't have to change the water that much.