Water garden inside?

We added a new sunroom on our house! YEAH!!! I would like to put a small above the floor pond in this room(about 200 gallons). My girls want to even have a frog or two. We made sure the floor would hold the load. Does anyone have any experience with this? We heat with wood in the winter and it will be good to have the extra humidity, otherwise we run a humidifier nonstop! What problems do you foresee?

Thanks for your input!
Sunlover19

I don't think frogs will stay just in the pond, someone else may know if there's some type of frog that won't leave the water and get into the house. If you want fish I would definately not put Koi in it the pond is too small. I would go with gold fish of some kind, even the hybridized kind with fan tails, or bubble eyes or big bellies. I don't know what all those are called just know they are available and would do well in a pond like you're talking about. You'll need good filtration with charcoal(removes ammonia,etc from fish waste) and some type of material(I use polyester filler from the sewing or craft supply area) to catch detritis to keep from having a fishy smell and keep the pond healthy. You have to think about water movement, which can be incorporated into the filtration. The pond shouldn't need heated as long as it is open to the house to get some heat in the winter. You'll have to watch that the water doesn't get too hot in the summer. You may need blinds on the windows that you can close at certain times if that becomes a problem. Goldfish, and Koi for that matter, don't like hot water. Of course plants are a neccesity(sp?)! You can always use those to shade the pond from the windows(if needed)...much prettier than blinds :~) Let me know when you get it in and I'm sure I can find some plants from my pond that would do well. Sorry I don't have any ideas for the construction phase though you may look at using interlocking blocks they use to make retaining walls. I think they make some pretty ones and they could even be painted.

I would love to see pics from start to finish if you have a digital camera. That would be very interesting to see and maybe one of these days I'll have an area for the same thing! Good luck!

Lana

Lana,

Thanks for the advice and the offer of plants! I will absolutely take you up on that when the time comes!

I will try to get pics up here on the progress of the project!

Thanks again!
Sunlover19

If you were able to keep the water heated, you could do a large tropical fish pond. That would be really cool!

What a wonderful idea! You are only limited by your imagination. I agree that you need to make sure that you have very good filtration. I would stick with the various varieties of goldfish as they are extremely tolerant of temperature changes and are not as particular about water quality as some of the fancier fish. For my first pond I got feeder goldfish from a bait shop and after about a year Big Ben is about 8" long. If you use a liner meant for outside pools you could make the actual pool out of just about any material. Just make sure that the inside is well padded before you put the liner in. Have fun! :)

I'm seeing a small bio-falls filter, and a large undergravel filter which you could make yourself (very, very easy) attached to the pump. This would take care of oxygenating the water and biologically filtering the water. I'm seeing underwater plants and colorful fish flitting about. There are lots of beautiful, colorful fish that you can get that are easy care. You can't go by what the people at Petco or Petsmart, let alone Walmart, say about the fish they sell. They put the same water temp requirement on every fish. Many of the fish sold as 'tropical fish' don't really need to have water that is 74 degrees. But most have to have warmer water than goldfish. If you do a little research, you'll find lots of things available.

Pixydish,

I am very interested in the filter you were talking about that I could make myself.
I have one in my outdoor pond that I paid over $100 for. OUCH!

Thanks everyone for you interest and suggestions!

If you have never seen an undergravel filter, go to any store that sells aquariums and look in the filter section just to get an idea of what I am talking about. It's a piece of plastic with slits in it that hold gravel above a space over the aquarium floor. The idea is that the water is pulled up from the bottom of the tank, through the gravel. The gravel is home to nitrifying bacteria that break down waste products from the fish.
I have a large one attached to my pond, called a veggie filter. You can see it in the photo. It's the small horseshoe shaped area above the actual pond. Basically, I ran a water line into the bottom of this area so that water would flow from the pump into the bottom of the veggie filter. (Your system would be less complicated than mine, for sure.) The water flows up through the gravel and then spills over the wall into the pond.

For your system, I can see it being very easy. You would need a large sheet of sturdy, rigid plastic or fiberglass. I immediately thought of that corrugated fiberglass roofing you can get at Lowes or HD. Cut the sheet to fit the inside of your pond, making sure you don't have any sharp edges. The close the fit, the better because you don't want gravel falling in around it too much. Maybe make a paper pattern of the pond interior a few inches up from the bottom.

Now, taking your circular saw or the cutting wheel of a dremel, cut slits into the fiberglass. I'm showing you a photo of the side of my skimmer just to give you an idea of what the slits would look like. If you use pea gravel, make sure the slits are not so wide that the gravel will fall through them. The whole point of this piece of plastic (or whatever) is to hold the gravel up from the bottom so that water can flow unobstructed underneath it. Put plenty of slits in it. The more the better, but do not compromise the strength of the piece.
Now you have to find something to hold it up off the floor of the pond. How high you want it will depend on how deep the pond is. I don't know if there is a way to figure this out accrurately, maybe someone else will have an idea. I would say if the pond is about 18 inches deep, maybe have the structure about 3 inches off the floor, with a 2-3 inche gravel bed. You might find some information about sizes of undergravel filters in relation to water volume by seaching aquarium sites.
Whatever you choose to hold the thing up, make it easy for water to flow around them. Choose something narrow, then place them around the perimeter of the thing, and also several in the middle. Make sure that it doesn't sag anywhere.

Now you'll want to connect your pump so that it draws water from underneath the gravel . The simplest way is to not use a waterfall, which would require you to split the water two ways from the pump.
The pump will draw your water out of the pond and then return it to the pond. For most pond systems this means it will pass the water through a filter then return it to the pond. For this system you want the water to be pulled out by the pump and then returned to the pond underneath the gravel. You'll need to know that pump you have and the size of the water return hose it can accomodate. When you decide where you want the water to come back into the pond, cut a hole in your filter just large enough for the hose to pass down into. The hose will be under some pressure, so don't make the hole too big. If you want to get fancy and make it sturdy, visit the plumbing department at your local hardware store and have them help you with a connection. It will be a bit tricky if you use the corrugated stuff for the filter, but it could be done. For this small indoor pond, though, it probably isn't necessary.
Make sure you place the hole for the water hose and the pump on OPPOSITE sides of the pond so that the pump is pulling water across the pond.
Then put your washed gravel (you'll be sorry if you don't wash it first.) on top of your filter and fill the pond with water, and let her rip! The bacteria will begin growing within a day or two, but you can also buy starter bacteria in the pond section, or the aquarium section.

I hope this is helpful to you. If you need more information, lmk