Greetings everyone!

My name is Clayton and I hail from the east Texas piney woods about an hour and some change outside of Houston. I'm new here and haven't even scratched the scratch when it comes to reading through archived articles and searching through old posts, but I came here to listen and learn from y'all gurus.

My wife and I live on almost 6 acres that is mostly wooded. There is section of our cleared, sodded, yard right around the house area in which we lost some large trees that opened up a relatively sunny area behind the house that is visible from our patio and common area windows. I've always been a nature lover and have tried to maintain a native and natural habitat on my property for wildlife. I do a lot of nature photography as a hobby and think having surface water on our property will encourage local species to visit and/or stay. My father has a couple of large tanks on his property in the hill country and I think time spent there really caused me to catch the "pond bug" so to speak.

I don't know much about where to start and the more I read, the more confusion and questions bubble up. That being said, I'm committed to creating a small pond in this area of my yard to use not only for aesthetics, but also/primarily for a wildlife habitat. I'd like to learn not only about the process (and hopefully some tribal knowledge about what NOT to do so I can avoid learning some of those the hard way), but how best to develop those ecosystems and maintain them over time. I also would like to encourage bird activity around the edges of the pond, so I'm hoping to pick up some pointers there as well.

The overall shape/dimensions, depth, etc. are still pretty much greenfield. I'm only limited by the space I have to work with... which isn't huge. I'm hoping my time here with y'all will positively shape the direction of this project.

I am looking forward to starting this journey and learning as much as I can along the way... and hopefully be about to contribute and help others in the future.

Cheers!
/clayton

Welcome Clayton, you have come to the right place. I am one year into pond maintenance and value this site like no other. Be prepared for your head to spin off as there is enough here to make you think till you head hurts, but it's all worth it if you are as nature oriented as the rest of us. Good introduction btw and be warned your first question leads to many, many others. Enjoy!

Welcome Clayton
We hailed from south of big Hou. Now in Buffalo area on 65 acres with a 5 Ac pond. Like 1/4 said its enough to make your head spin. But the pond boss family can and will bail you out with information. Read read read and soon it will start to make sense (we'll sort of). Get involved in the forum and make new friends.
Are you near Livingston? We have a member in Legget area also
Good luck and have fun

Welcome from deep east Texas!! Don't forget to subscribe to Pond Boss Magazine. Great info. and resource guide!!

Howdy! I'm in Livingston and just stocked my new pond. Are you up here?

Welcome Clayton from North Texas. There are a couple of experts here and a big bunch of students that have learned some stuff along the way. I've learned that all of this stuff is fairly regional. Although there are a lot of generalities in ecosystems, the things that apply on my place North of Fort Worth don't always work in areas like North of Houston. A similarity is that everything depends on water quality.

A recommendation is buy a couple of books. First if Raising Trophy Bass by Lusk. It's about a lot more than the title suggests. I consider it the entry level book that, after 20 years, I still refer to. The other is Just Add Water by Mike Otto. It's about digging holes and impounding water. Both are short cuts and you can find the stuff on other places but it would take a lot of time.

Welcome to PB posting. You are starting a lifelong journey. Asking questions is the way to knowledge - so ask away.

I am further west toward Montgomery, but my in-laws are up in Polk county, so I know the area roughly.

Howdy!
/c

Thanks for the warm welcome and book recommendations. I have ordered them both from Pond Boss.

Thanks!
/c

Welcome to PB. There is so much info on this site. Also it is last minute, but the PondBoss conference is right by you this year and it is Friday 13th and Saturday 14th. Check it out on the home page. It is really a great conference for new folks.

Thanks for pointing this out to me, Brian. I am not 100%
I can attend those dates at the moment, but I'm going to work on it.
Do you (or anyone) know if there is on-site registration available?
If I can make it, I could register/pay at the door if that is an option since I live close enough to not have to stay at the event venue for lodging.

Thanks again!
/c

I'll bet that you could show up at the last minute. If you do, take down some of our names and ask where we are.

Clayton, welcome to the forum. It's a good place, with good people.

West of I45 is different than East. Both the soils and rainfall. You can see it in the vegitation.

Don't let anyone discourage you. Odds are you have good clay a few feet beneath your sandy loam surface soil. Local dirt guys will have a reliable gut feel. The dirt guy will know how to build your pond and how big and deep it can and should be.

Thanks... I moved out of the city almost 2 years ago after nearly a year of building a home (weather delays, etc). I happened to be on site the day the guy came and dug the septic. I couldn't help but notice that after a couple of feet, it was this thick, sticky, clay. It didn't look very permeable at all for liquids and the spot I'm looking to poke a hole for the pond isn't too far from that area, so the geology should be similar. I am having a guy come out with a small backhoe and dig an 8 or 10 foot sample hole in my desired pond location this week so we can check the consistency of the soil. I'll probably hold off a bit to progress beyond that until after I get some more learnin' under my belt and hopefully attend the Pond Boss convention mid-month.

/c

Look what arrived yesterday! Excited guys... thanks for the recommendations. I'm hoping to meet a bunch of y'all this weekend at Pond Boss VII if I can get there...



/clayton

Raising Trophy Bass is kind of the intro book to ponds. Lusk has written a bunch more but this was one of his first. I still refer to it when I can't remember things. Otto's book is quite complete regarding everything about impounding water.

On our way there now. Maybe get a chance to meet you. Welcome to the forum.

My really, really tiny pond dig started this morning. I'm like a kid on Christmas morning.

It really doesn't even register on the scale of most of y'all's ponds, but I'm excited. I'll post some pics of the process soon... just wanted to share the big day!

Exciting time! We also have a small pond and we really enjoy it. How big did you decide to go?

I would say it is probably a little smaller than 1/10th of an acre honestly. I changed my original plans to work within an existing clear area without clearing more trees (except for 3 small black gums that would be near the levee). When they finish the project and take some laser measurements, I'll know more precisely, but I would guess it's just under 100,000 gallons total volume.

edit: I forgot to mention that it is around 7' or 8' at the deepest point, so fairly shallow average depth if you take into account the overall area.

/c

My sediment pond is about 1/10th acre and my forage pond is about half that size.

You can do a lot in a tenth acre. One thing that can really affect a small BOW is the amount of runoff that passes through it. If you have a huge runoff area, like my sediment pond has, the large water exchanges can stress the fish. The other thing is if you really push a small pond, make it really productive, aeration is really beneficial. You can push your feed levels more.

With feeding and aeration I raised a bunch of CNBG to transfer to my main pond.

I may have already posted this on another thread so forgive me if I am repeating, but here is a thread with lots of links to specialty ponds which include small ponds.

Thread on specialty ponds

Thanks so much, John. I actually have the small Vertex system (PondLyfe 2) going in day one. I’m excited about maximizing what I can do with the limited space I have...

I really appreciate the help.

/c

Here is one of the links in that specialty pond thread that is particularly interesting. It is an article by Bob Lusk about a couple of tenth acre ponds of his. I do not know if food production is one of your goals or just recreation, but you can see what production is possible by what Bob has done.

Article about small ponds

That was a great article... thank you for sharing the link. I also read through each of the links on your specialty ponds thread... I appreciate you pointing those out!

I was under the impression that the Mozambique TP that we can stock in Texas don't overwinter due to water temps dropping below the mid-50's, so I hadn't really put a lot of planning into that species. I do intend to stock non-predator species shortly after getting the water tested (CNBG/BG, RES, FHM, etc). The primary goals of this "mini-pond" (a term I just picked up from Bob's article) is wildlife habitat land improvement and visual aesthetics. I would love to have a healthy fish population and don't mind the extra care/feeding/management, but growing fish is not my primary goal.

I will say that I'm eager to learn more of what I don't know because that may impact and enhance my goals for this endeavor. You don't know what you don't know.

/clayton

One thing to be aware of is that when you push a pond in fish productivity, you may introduce additional management issues.

For example heavy feeding leads to nutrient buildup in the water which can lead to FA problems. Everything you do to change a pond from its natural state may have a desired effect but it may also have other unanticipated undesired effects.

So if fish production is not one of your main goals, you may want to go about feeding fish only as a recreational aspect or not at all. It might be easier to manage your water quality without the additional nutrient input.

But it depends on a number of things, the natural fertility of your pond and watershed being at least one.

So there are lots of variables to consider.

But do not let that scare you. You may find the journey as meaningful as the final destination. I know I do.

I'm looking forward to the process. I am treating this as an incubator... make my mistakes and learn on this mini-pond with the dream of having a large pond on more acreage in the future. Wise words from Pond Boss VII: "Mistakes on tiny ponds don't cost as much as mistakes on big ponds."

Clayton, you may want to revisit adding Tilapia next spring. When added to a small pond with an existing fish population, Tilapia recruitment is very limited at best, so overpopulation shouldn't be a problem. 2-3#'s of Tilapia should also control any algae problems in the small pond, and if you can get one or two males and the rest females, their fry will help feed everything else.

I have a small pond just north of Houston that has some TP that have managed to over-winter for at least 4 years. I wasn't surprised that they survived a mild winter or two, but this long is a shock. I switched over to Optimal BG Jr feed this year and these TP love it!!

If you don't mind me asking, how deep is your pond? I wonder if either good circulation (daily turns) or shallow depths help keep the water temps up on our few cold days because of solar tranfer.
It's encouraging to hear you have had this unexpected success. I'm west of Conroe, so close enough to perhaps get similar results.

/c

One thing to remember about stocking any pond, but especially small ones, is to stock/manage for lowest water levels(end of summer usually) instead of max or full pool. How to do that, for me, is like shooting at a moving target blindfolded.

Thanks is a great reminder! I think my well will keep up with evaporation and is deep enough to weather drought, but it's better to be safe than sorry. Thanks, Dave!

/clayton

Essentially, only the water where sunlight penetrates holds O2. Fish can go down there but can't live there. You can sometimes feel the cold water thermocline when treading water. Right now, my water level is down about 4 ft so I have lost a huge amount of the productive environment. Depending on how the pond is built(sloping sides, etc.) the top 25% can easily hold 40% or so of the water.

KH8d -
I’m really not sure how deep my small pond is but am told it is around 10’ deep or so. As you can see from the pic, the Tp have grown pretty nicely. They feed pretty aggressively on the Optimal BG Jr.