Beginner's Guide

 By Harry Hutchings BSc. AMPS Timberland Watergarden

This article was originally published in the International Water Garden Society journal, The Water Garden Journal, and has been published on this site with the kind permission of Harry Hutchings and the International Water Garden Society 

The United Kingdom (UK) climate is not suitable for tropical waterlily cultivation outdoors. Please, however, do not overlook the beauty of these plants. It is not too expensive to create a stunning display.
I have 5 glasshouses of sizes from 6 ft. x 8 ft. up to 12 ft. by 24 ft. I also utilize the much cheaper poly tunnel option in which I have many 1m x 3m fiberglass tanks as used by aquarium and pond suppliers to keep their fish. However, the glasshouse pond gives the more presentable display.The Harry Hutchings tropical garden plan
A good size as a start is 10 ft. x 12 ft. Please avoid the cheap spring clip glazing types. Go for the glasshouses with strip sealed glazing. These have better security against high winds and also have a construction that allows the use of the expanded polystyrene sheets for internal insulation.
A pond needs to be excavated and a liner used. Choose butyl with under liner if you can afford it. If not, at least choose a liner that will withstand a lot of foot traffic. Your tropical lilies will need a lot of attention, as you will see later.
If you can, orientate your glasshouse with your door facing south. This will allow the garden section to be on the north face, which is essentially at the back. Construct the pool size 8 ft. wide by 10 ft. long. 18 inches deep is sufficient for most tropical waterlilies. A margin of 15 inches at the back is filled with a mixture of peat and sterilized loam based topsoil. The side 12-inch wide strips are filled similarly. A front 9-inch margin is to be used for the equipment. I construct the pool using 3 inch deep x 2 inch wide treated softwood to form the frame to which I nail the liner...this allows me to use “decking” cut to 9 inch lengths for the front equipment strip. Using a similar strip of treated wood as the front support, I insulate the north face (the back) and the east and west (sides) back panels with white expanded polystyrene sheets. Those sold in the trade-building store around 1/2-inch thick you will find slide nicely into the internal upright pillar recesses. This is not possible with the cheaper spring clip glazing models I mentioned earlier. I also cover the back two roof panels either side with UV protected bubble polythene sheeting using twist ties to secure it. Despite the UV protection treatment, this will need replacing every few years so have some planks of wood handy to span the pond for this maintenance.

Take the fish in the plastic bag you purchased them to the pool as quickly as possible.
Float the bag in the water for 15-30 minutes so that the temperature of the water in the bag can adjust to that of the pool.
The top of the bag can be opened and rolled down to form a float that will keep the bag upright. Whilst it is floating slowly introduce several cupfuls of pool water so that the fish can acclimatise to the new water chemistry. This further reduces the possibility of stress.

Now you are the lucky owner of a water garden or backyard pond, you may have always intended that this would be a home for fish. But what fish? 

Apart from ordinary Goldfish, fish that are suitable for average pools of any size include: Red Comets (Sarasas), Shubunkins, Golden Orfe, Tench and Rudd. These will all happily live with one another. More ornamental cold water Goldfish such as fantails and bubble-eyes, find it difficult to compete with other types particularly in the colder months. It is probably best to 'over winter' them in an aquarium indoors if you want to keep them There are always exceptions to the rule and here in one of my first ponds, koi do live in a tolerable harmony with plantssafe and healthy.
Various forms of ‘Fantails’, being slower movers than many pond fish, would find it difficult to compete in winter 
All the above fish are quite content to share their lives with Koi Carp. However serious keepers of Koi Carp need to think in terms of a minimum depth of 3ft - preferably 5 to 6ft - with a proportionately large width and length.
Koi keepers very often have to think in terms of no plants or at least have them protected from the vandalism of the fish. Therefore because of the lack of the biological cycle in which plants form an essential link, and also because of the rapid metabolism of these potentially very large fish, a sophisticated filter system is essential in keeping Koi. They are not fish of extremely cold water and find our winters stressful to say the least. When fish are stressed, then they are open to disease and parasites, and since Koi are such expensive fish, the only way to keep them with confidence is to employ all the quirks of pool design and filter technology at your disposal. (See all the recent biofiltration articles)

But first, before you even think of introducing any fish to your pond.......

POND HEALTH AND THE TECHNOLOGICAL SAFETY NET: beginners guide to the myriad of filters, biological filters, ultra violet  clarifiers, bubble bead filters, skimmers and protein skimmers etc.

The picture above demonstrates in a simple form the natural cycle of
organic substances (represented by the red arrows) being broken down in a pond with a biological
filter. This is called the Nitrogen cycle and in this case
demonstrates in particular what happens to fish food as it is digested
first by the fish and then the resulting faeces are then processed by
bacteria in the filter medium. The cartoon is one that featured in 'The Perfect Pond Detective Book 1: The biological balance' by Peter May, available from this site.

Biological filtration:

is a method of removing detritus/muck, organic compounds and specifically ammonia and nitrites from pond water by pumping pond water into a container and straining it through various foams, meshes or filtration media in which there is an established population of specific bacteria. These bacteria need plenty of oxygen to survive and they use it to digest organic compounds and a lot of the sediment that would otherwise lie decomposing in the same way on the bottom of the pond, although much more slowly. For small ponds there are two basic types of designs of filter that are built to work like this: Gravity filters and Pressure filters. 

UVCs or Ultraviolet Clarifiers are capable of making green pond water clear, but they do not make it clean. Without the help of a biological filter or a very healthy pond, UVCs used on their own are just making the ingredients for a pond polluting time bomb.

The term Ultraviolet Clarifier applies to a piece of pond equipment used to the green free floating microscopic that make fish pond water green. The unit is usually fitted on the hose line between the pump in the pond and before it enters a biological filtration unit. The water is pumped from the pond through the unit which contains an Ultraviolet lamp. The water is circulated around the lamp bulb and then proceeds on to the filtration unit. The effect this has on the water is that any algae present are severely damaged. It also causes the individual cells of algae to clump together and thus they are more easily filtered out of the water in the biological filtration medium and then digested by the bacteria that inhabit it.

If you have noticed foam forming around the bottom of the waterfall or in the biological filter, it may be a sign that the new pond and filtration system is not fully functional yet, but if has been lingering around for some time it may be indicative of larger problem serious enough to cause the death of your fish. A protein skimmer may be an expensive but it will be a sure-fire piece kit that helps you avoid  anything like this being a problem.

DOCs (Dissolved Organic Matter) the bane of the serious fishkeeper

As winter approaches and water temperatures cool, the seasonal change will exacerbate the problem that foam on the pond may be indicative of. One contributing factor may be excessive runoff from surrounding flowerbeds of soil sediment or accumulated debris around the pond, also trees shedding their leaves into the pond. Certain species like yew, oak, willow and elder can be particularly toxic, but also some innocuous small leaved types of Acer, although not toxic in themselves, break down very rapidly and can add quite a bit of organic matter to the water, which to a certain extent dissolves in it quite quickly. This organic matter is referred to with dread by Koi keepers as DOCs, 'dissolved organic compounds'. These are already present in the dampness of the soil and so can create an instant foam as soon as it splashes in.

OK, if you think pond skimmers are so important, what are they and why didn't someone tried to sell me one when I bought all the other kit for the pond?

Most ponds are in gardens and gardens have plants and shrubs and trees in them. These produce all manner of debris and detritus. In the Autumn you can cover your pond with a net to stop leaves from blowing in, but even so you will only stop the majority of leaves. Many hundreds of leaves will find their way in early or late on either before or after or under the net, despite any strict adherence to the mantra to make the pond site away from trees. The Oase Floating Lake SkimmerBesides there are hundreds of successful ponds that have only been properly landscaped into place when they have a ruffle of trees and shrubs around them. In spring and summer, pollen and flowers blow off the trees and in very late spring many evergreen shrubs and trees have a fall that sheds many of the old their old tired leaves.

If you had a swimming pool you would have a skimmer system built into the side of the pool sucking in the water and collecting all the floating debris on the pond before it sinks to the bottom. You folks iThe Oase poolside skimmer of the swimming pool type.n the USA have been building this sort of skimmer into the side of your ponds for years and you cant understand why I'm bothering to make any bones about it. Well, here in the UK it has always been something that we thought we didn't have to bother with, besides it requires quite a bit of forethought and plannning and real engineering i.e. building. There has always been the excuse that we wanted to keep our ponds looking natural and besides the skimmers would suck up the tadpoles and goodness knows what. 

Well the news is that pondlife friendly skimmers have been around for a long time, and now , even if you had forgotten to put a skimmer in that's no problem any more. You can put one anywhere in the pond and hide it with plants or float it out in an unobtrusive spot. Some sit on the bottom of the pond and by linking up to your present pump can be adjusted to any height to reach the surface. The floating type have are generally self powered with their own little motor, but with these you not only get all the muck and the pollen sucked gently off the surface, you get a blast of oxygenating bubbles below the surface too. The floating types dont have to be permanently their either. You could just set them up for that shed of pollen that say comes from Lime trees in the spring, or petals from Cherry trees in May. Anything that helps delay the inevitable day of the big pond clean out, has to be worth its weight in gold.

Bubble Bead filters or Powerbead filters are particularly suitable for Koi, especially where the pond has become a little bit overcrowded as the stock has grown, to help give clear and above all healthy water. They have the ability to remove the tiniest particles of detritus that can be forever in free-floating motion and not necessarily filtered out of the water in normal biofilters removing specks down to 10microns, but their main purpose is the breakdown of the pollutants in the water.

Deep-water aquatics - the water lilies in particular are the main reason why so many people would want a water garden where ‘garden’ is the operative word, rather than ‘water garden’ for the sake of having fish. TheyNymphaea Gonnere is another white, but a 'double' - a multi-petalled variety. are plants of exceptional beauty and dark mystery abounds around them even to this modern day. They are gross feeders and so effectively use up a lot of the excess nutrients in a pool. Their leaves, lying as big flat pads on the surface, are the most efficient cover and shade on the pool when it is most required, when spring burgeons into summer.
Allow one lily to every 25sqft of pool surface if it is classified as a moderate to vigorous grower.
They come in all sizes and colours apart from blue that will be hardy in the UK, up until this year that is. You will find varieties suitable for growing in tubs or the shallow margins of the ponds like the small pygmaea hybrids wallowing in a mere 15-20cm, through to the giant hardy juggernauts like Nymphaea ‘Collosea', a cream coloured lily and N. Gladsoniana, a white, happy in depths up to 1 metre and with spread up to 2.5 metres.