Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Looking for advice, please.

Howdy, friends!

I haven't posted in a while. I hope everyone is well and your year is off to a great start!

Georgia and I felt like it was time to put some more distance between us and the city, so we started the process of looking for dirt and listing our home last summer. We closed on 20 acres in central Texas back in August and sold our primary residence in Montgomery in January. That's the house I had the "mini pond" project at... my first pond. One of things I miss the most about that place was the pond! I really miss feeding my bluegill. I learned a lot owning that tiny pond and enjoyed all the years trying to be a good steward of the life within it.

I sincerely hope I will be able to have another pond built at our new place. I saved some money to budget for having one built, but naively did not consider the topography for pond-friendly watershed as a criteria during purchase of the land. Honestly, selling our home that we loved so dearly was extremely stressful for us and pond planning literally just slipped my mind. Well, you can't put the milk back in the cow, so I'm hoping I can figure something out.

I have not had test holes dug yet, but that will be a first step once I select a pond construction resource. Our builder did have someone come out and dig a couple of test holes for the septic (to determine if we could use a leach field) and they hit clay fairly shallow... so aerobic it is, but that is potentially a good sign for material. The guy doing the dirt work for my builder has some experience in pond construction and said he would be happy to do the test holes for the pond material check for about $1500, but I think I'm going to talk to a few different pond builders before I make a selection. I'd love some recommendations of who I should speak with if y'all have personal testimonials or referrals to share. The physical location is south Hamilton county between Hamilton and Evant. It's not quite as rocky there as the Edwards Plateau and seems to have better soil in that region... but from what I have heard, ponds are hit or miss in central Texas. We had so much clay in Montgomery that most anyone could probably make a pond that holds water. Not the case out here, I reckon.

Here is the topo of our lot. You can see the water drains over the land immediately on either side of our place. The little blue circle is roughly where I was hoping to poke a hole... that isn't the size of the pond, but just the general area I would love to have a pond. I spoke with the USDA NRCS guy about the watershed on my land... super nice guy, by the way. He suggested that I don't try to go bigger than around 1500 cubic yards for the available watershed at that location. Rough math puts that somewhere around a quarter of an acre of surface area if you sloped down at around 4 to 1 to a 10 foot deep center area... I think. I would love it if it could be deeper than 10 feet and larger than the 110-ish feet across that approximation suggests. There are a lot of steps between here and there (like checking material with test holes, etc) before size can be dialed in... I understand.



Understandably, the gentleman working in resource conservation was not a fan of using ground water to supplement watershed... and I agree for filling the pond. My first pond was so small, I could counter evaporation in the summer with well water. Is that even a thing for larger ponds or is it just too much to keep up with? The main reason I am wanting to build this pond is for recreation and personal enjoyment... spending time there, maybe some swimming and fishing, but mostly for the serenity. I'm not trying to grow trophy sport fish, but I would like a healthy ecosystem with wildlife diversity. I have seen a lot of ranch tanks that provide water to local wildlife and that's about it... certainly not much to look at. If I can't keep it relatively full enough to get a balanced ecosystem developed, it might not be worth the expense to start. I'm retired and a little intimidated by getting in over my head financially with this pond project... so I don't want to bite off more than I can chew here. I suppose, worst case, I could do another mini-pond... but I sure am hoping the dream of a bigger, natural pond can come true this year.

As always, I sure appreciate the wisdom shared here... thank you so much for taking a look and sharing your thoughts.

Warm regards,
Clayton

Just use a 50 micron filter on either the inlet or outlet to prevent pumping unwanted "things" into your pond from the creek.

Cody note: To eliminate fish eggs and fish fry a 500 micron filter (0.5millimeter) is very adequate while allowing phytoplankton and zooplankton to enter and help seed good plankton into the pond to enhance and kick start the food web / chain. Putting the filter on the discharge works best in my pumping applications. The filter on the inlet tends to become clogged to easily and restricts the water flow to the pump. Make sure the filter on the discharge is large enough to not become packed with debris and leaves so water freely flows out of the filter. Size of the filter depends on size of pump and amount of junk in the water being pumped. An inlet filter of 1/2" reduces the amount junk moving through the pump and collecting in the discharge hose filter.