Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Bottom of Pond--leave clay or cover in rock?

Hello all:

We have started construction on a small pond that will be fed by a spring/creek that runs year round. I'm looking for recommendations on if we should or should not line the bottom of the pond with the sandstone chunks that were excavated during the construction process. It seems to me that the pond should clear up quicker if the clay bottom is covered with rock, but I haven't seen any info on this topic on this forum.

Opinions? Alternatively, we could just put random large boulders in to provide fish cover.

I'm thinking of doing the same thing using road gravel in my small pond. Maybe put 4-6 inches on the bottom and up the side that slopes the most. Like you, I think the water will be cleaner and the BG and YP can spawn on it.

I am guessing that any smaller stone will be quickly lost under muck and sediment, perhaps in just a few years. Larger stone can be used to build structures and cavities.
When our pond was made, we set stones on stones to make voids under them for FHM and other critters to thrive. In a few places we made stone houses so I could later drop an underwater camera down and peek in, but it wound up deeper and hard to access. Still good structure for smaller fish.
One thing to think of is stone and structure will get in the way of netting out fish.

I would leave things alone until your sure it holds water. If you dump in a bunch if rock and then you discover a leak somewhere you've just created more of a mess to dig through / clean out/ etc..

Don't Ask me how I know.......

X2 on the 'short term solution' - if you have any sediment runoff or leaves/etc that are going to settle in the pond then the rock would be covered up in short order. I wouldn't waste the time and money doing the whole thing.

However I have several spots throughout my small pond where I've dumped riprap...it's big enough that it doesn't get covered quickly and it provides all sorts of nooks and crannies for crayfish and similar invertebrates to hide - and for the fish to hunt them.

We left ours out until we saw how well it held water. After two years we decided to abandon the idea of a liner and accept the fluctuation. We are making the rock work to our advantage by reducing erosion, providing cover, looking interesting, etc. During a recent period of heavy rains and inflow we siphoned it down and added more rock, plants, and SMB nests. Whenever it used to rain heavy we would get mud into the pond. With the rock and plant material we have added this has been greatly reduced. We have only lined the first three to four feet with rock and left the rest bare.

That looks really nice Victor. Reminds me of a rocky creek. Great job.

This is not exactly what you are talking about doing, but this is what I did to our micro forage pond (40'x70'x7.5').

Picture is with the rock lining. Did not do all of it, but the biggest portion.

I had the same idea for getting the pond going quick. This ridge in the middle we covered with 3/4" stone with 1/2" pea stone mixed with some crusher screenings. We have our lily pads in pots on this ridge and now feel its ok to dump them out on to the bottom of the pond.

We have found that if you want to catch a feeding fish any time of the day just drop a worm out on this ridge and you have a fish every cast.

As you can see we just rolled all the rock we found when digging into the bottom and added some cement tile. Dropped in a combine tire as well. Little note drill holes to let the air out of any tires you put into the bottom of the pond or they will float.

We left the rest of the bottom clay. Seams to all be working perfectly fine. We are blessed with the best clay you can have so really digging a hole and filling it with water makes an easy pond. We just set the over flow to the water level we wanted.

Cheers Don.

EDIT: at last two pictures are of the pond full. You can see the lily's on the center ridge in the second last picture. The last picture shows the ridge in green. The air stations in blue and the inflow and over flow from the creek in red.

Nice looking pond. Where in Ontario?

Nice looking ponds! Fish like rocks and i like the way rocks look. I like those big rocks that victor used and i like the smaller rocks also.

Just North of London. Half way between Lucan and Exeter.

Cheers Don.