Plans for a Duck Pond

[OldGuy43]

12, well 13 including Lame Duck.

 

[m.kitchengirl]

Interesting (and timely) thread.
I am going to be building a deluxe duck habitat in a few weeks & plan to add a large garden pond unit.
I hope y'all don't mind if I lurk.

 

[OldGuy43]

Interesting (and timely) thread.
I am going to be building a deluxe duck habitat in a few weeks & plan to add a large garden pond unit.
I hope y'all don't mind if I lurk.

Oh no. No lurking! This thread is Top Secret. Seriously though, don't just lurk, join in. Any ideas are welcome.

"Y'all"? You didn't say that bad for a Yankee gal. Howdy.

 

[m.kitchengirl]

Oh no. No lurking! This thread is Top Secret. Seriously though, don't just lurk, join in. Any ideas are welcome.

Thanks.

My crazy idea is to build a frame around the pond. I want to drain the water through PVC into buckets for the garden & fill from rain barrels. I need to figure out how to support the pea gravel in the frame, to try to minimize mud in the yard.
I am terrible at building things, but I have a lot of motivation & will power. It will take me 4 times longer than it would take most people though.
I am starting to collect materials. I want to use as much recycled material as possible.

 

[TLWR]

This is the pond we built almost a year ago.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/496237/building-a-pond-step-by-step-mostly-complete-post71

The water is far from clear, but it does stay clear-ish for 2-3 days. It is just under 1000 gallons and the filter is about 70 gallons.
What it does is make it not smell and not grow nasty algae on top within 3 days like the big kiddie pool did prior to that and the ducks wouldn't even venture near it.
We can easily go a month without draining/cleaning and then we do it just because the green water bothers us. The ducks don't care.
But I also only have 2 ducks. I'd like to add 2-3 more, but that's more than double the nasty in the pond LOL

Personally, both DH and I like what we did with the pond and there really isn't much we'd do differently given the chance.
We use the drain to drain it and also a sump as well so it gets empty quicker. And we also clean the filter box when we do the pond too or it just dumps the duck poop from in there back into the nice clean pond water!

 

[rainplace]

With 12 to 13 ducks you're going to be dealing with a lot of poo. There's no way with a bathtub that you're going to achieve much more other than moving it around. Your best bet, as was noted before, is to make sure that it's easy to drain.