This is a continuation from previous post where I shared my indoor tank. Instead of keeping them indoors all year we wanted to build a pond outside for the turtles. As I was trying to come up with something there were many things to consider. 1st and foremost was that I had to do it a cheaply as possible as we didn't have much money. 2nd my wife refused to let me use Pond liner for various reasons. 3rd was whatever I made had to be able to withstand our winters (Middle of Alberta Canada), although I was not going to have the pond filled in winter it was still something to keep in mind.
Using what I had gained from building my indoor tank and reading other posts on this site over and over again I was ready to make an attempt.
So the adventure began. After looking and trying designs with Cinder block and then other materials I saw that these methods just cost too much and all had the potential to crack or spring leaks without using pond liner. So I eventually ended up going to a local plastics company and was lucky that I was able to purchase a "bad pour". I believe it was originally a plastic barge that was to be used with multiple pieces in rivers or something like that, but there was a hole in the top. It was suppose to be $1200 but I got it at his cost of plastic at $300. I got it delivered and cut off the top and was left with a 12 ft by 5ft by 4ft tank for my pond. The upside is I didn't need to worry about claws or roots poking holes and creating leaks.
I started by digging a hole beside out deck with the idea of the top of the tank being level with the deck. Well because of tree roots, rocks and other fun things it took over 200 hours to dig this hole.... Please do yourself a favour and pay someone to come in with a back hoe or something and dig your hole in a hour. Oh.... did I forget to mention that I live on, well beside, a lake? Woke up on morning after it had rained slightly and the hole was filled with water and the tank was floating around. Pulled out the tank and filled the 4 foot hole halfway back up... To this day we still have issues with water pushing our tank up in the spring when its empty before we prep it for the season, but until it breaks there is no way I'm digging it out and fixing it. Feel free to laugh at the redneck high fashion... Lulu lemon sweats (so comfy) and rubber boots.
The tank that I got had 3 grooves along the bottom which made putting a decent size bottom drain in out of the question, so I cut a hole in each groove and had enough room to add shower drains, which then attached to 1 bigger pipe and ran to the 1st of 4 filter boxes. I used a Carboy (sp?) for 1st filter (added bottom drain to filter so I can empty it once a week) and glass furnace filters in 2nd box, with the 3rd having spounges, scrub pads and other dense materials to trap anything that got by. The 4th box had my pump for sending the water back to the waterfall. On the top of each filter we cut some of the plastic that was left over from the top of the tank I had taken off and used them to create plant holders so the roots sat in the filter area and provided some natural filtering (by end of summer the roots will grow to become entwined with filter media). This also help hide the filters a little or at least make them such an eye sore.
Then I used all the rocks I had unearthed while digging and other rocks found around our area to build a rock wall around the tank. Also just happen to have a whole pile of dirt to use that I had dug for the hole. The main reason for this was cost as it was free, now I'm glad we did it this way for looks too but mostly it was cost factor at the time.
We built a little floating dock so the turtles could get out and sun themselves. Also put a big fake bird beside the pond to help keep predators away as we have some hawks in the area. Then it was up to my wife to add plants and flowers and make the area look nice. The picture included is just a few plants and does not do it justice of what it looked like afterwards but for now can't find any of those pics.
Overall it was effective and worked. It got the turtles and fish outside for the summer, tested the filter system against the summer/sun/heat. Next post will be about the 2nd summer and the changes we made because we were not happy with it as it was.