New pond fish/mortar question

We are working on mortaring in stones that will be both in and around our new pond. I am aware that concrete/mortar mix has lime that is bad for fish. The water is mostly drained out now as we work. This is a still pond from 6 to 24 inches deep. It is a garden pond that will have primarily plants and a few goldfish. My question is how long should I wait before putting goldfish into the pond once the mortar is dry and pond is full again. I've read everything from one week to four weeks.

Here's a picture of our work so far. I'm taking photos now because once the plants take over I'll won't get to enjoy the stone in the water much at all!

Thanks for the help. I don't want to torture any fish.
Sue

I believe it was about a week before we added fish to our pond because of the motar. I wait about 2 days on the chlorine.

Jeri

Thanks Jeri,

It has been hard for me to find instructions that apply to anything other than concrete ponds. Since we don't have as much mortar within the pond itself I don't think we will have as much of a problem with lime but we will have some issues. The stones on the sloping wall are mortared together and the coping stones are mortared. There is one other sloping bank that will have some stones mortared under the water level but that's it.

I've read to spray the mortar with a mixture of vinegar and water, rinse and flush all of the water in the pond. But those instructions were for a concrete lined pond. I don't have that much "access" to the surfaces of the mortar with all of the stones in there too. I'm not sure that it would work so well.

Anyways I'm so excited about how nice this pond is coming out - it fits just perfectly in the spot where we put it. We had acorus in our old water feature and now it will really have a place to grow. Same with water lillies.

Our dogs and cats love it too so some extra fencing will be coming soon to keep them out of that part of the yard when unattended. Last night, thanks to the dog door letting them explore at will, we had to kick several muddy paws off the bed and wash all of the sheets.

Sue

So much for spraying with vinegar and water. And so much for filling and rinsing or filling the pond to check the "beach" and the overflow height. While we were still working on mortaring stones today we discovered we already had a new pond resident. Now we are trickling (barely) water into the pond but this will take weeks and weeks to fill, LOL!

But this is why we got the pond to begin with so I'm very happy... puzzled about how to proceed but happy!

Sue