Texas Gardening: New Here, 1 by Sheila_FW

Sheila_FW wrote:
You will need to decide where to put the pond so that the fish have some afternoon sun or provide a deep shaded area in the pond for them. If I was to do it over, our 24-26" would be 3 foot deep all over. Herons land on the edge and walk into the water! They don't care how much you pay for the fish either. Also don't put it too close to trees like pecan, oak, etc. that drop everything in them!!! We made that mistake with the oak and then one we did have under a pecan. We cut the pecan down, but later took out that pond (so plan ahead)! Our area as I said is near a storm drain for the neighborhood and when it gets full the water has no where to go. But it also had a river of sorts between houses and it would jump the retaining wall and into the area around the pond stirring up sand and gravel and carring with it dirt and grass/weed seeds. It made a mess. So get your drainage problems, if any solved first.
Fish can be purchased @ super prices at a little place in Haltom City called Keller Farms. It is a old house that has loads of aquatic life in every corner and fish tanks outside too. As for the plants and koi problems. I have noticed that if you use the plastic pots and soil for aquatic planting then weight them with larger rocks on top, they usually won't harm the plant. But they turn them over a lot while spawning. I bought water lillies and they immediately uprooted them. So I took some of the large baskets and used the aquatic soil, but sewed the 3/4" poly netting over the top. The plants still put out their foliage and were protected from the large fish. The smaller fish didn't cause damage because they were too busy trying to say out of the way of the bigger fish. Hope you will dmail me and maybe you can come by and see the set up sometime. It has been in place since 2003, and still running the same pump.