Duck pond

[bobble07]

Hi everyone..

I have a roughly 3.5m x 6m x 2.5m deep hole at the end of my garden. I will be looking to fill this is in a bit and to create something of a large duck pond - however I plan to acquire only about 5 ducks. Many of the projects I have looked at on here seem quite small in comparison

It seems one of the challenges of a duck pond is keeping it clean / filtration etc... and I can see how 5 ducks in a very small pond could easily get messed up but with a much larger pond it would seem it would take much longer to get messed up.

Am I right in thinking that just because the pond will be much larger (than a small one.. ) that the size of the filtration system only really needs to take into account the amount of ducks / waste???

I hope that makes sense.

 

[Gallinarium]

Unfortunately, it's less the fact of the size than the fact that it's standing water. While a pool that size would be fine for a while, duck poop in the water stays in the water. You would have to clean it out and refill it often. This is less of a factor in a body of water, but a "small" pool or pond...

 

[bobble07]

Hi Gallinarium thanks for the reply. I will be looking to include pond plants, bio filter of some sort and a quite high powered pump (10,000 L per hour or 20,000 L per hour) creating a waterfall for oxygenation

Given that I will not be including much if any fish stock in the pond and it will be a relatively large body of water do you think I cold potentially get away with circulating the water once over 2 or possibly 3 hours? and/or just having the pump on during the day?

If I can get away with only having to empty clean and refill every few months that wouldn't be too bad I guess

 

[Nikasha]

Hi @bobble07 - have you made any progress on your pond? We are digging one of a similar size (I think. I'm on imperial measurements. ) We had a first go at it, and it largely filled up with rain water. We are supposed to have someone come in with a backhoe tomorrow to make it deeper and bigger. We don't have ducks yet, so my first concern is keeping it from being a breeding location for mosquitos, and my second concern is developing an overall balanced ecosystem. We live in a very bird-heavy area, so regardless of whether we get ducks this summer, I imagine the wild birds will find the pond soon too.

I haven't done too much research yet, but I've been wondering whether just water movement (a small pump or fountain) would help, or whether plants or other interventions would be necessary. It hadn't occured to me that we might need filtration until I started searching threads on here. My husband spoke to his uncle about his stock pond (maybe twice the size of what we're doing?), and he doesn't add any flow or filtration, it's just a 10ft deep water reservoir. However, his only intentional animals are cattle- though I'm sure wild birds/ducks visit frequently.

Would love to see pics of yours and hear your progress and what you're learning!