Agree the cattails will be put to use both for us and the pigs will get to eat them. This whole thing has been a few years in the making. First I wanted to keep everything local so I hired a guy here to dig the pond, trouble is he can dig but doesn't know squat about ponds. First he said bentonite to line it, have a lot of clay in the soil to start. Trouble is he didn't pack the ground tight first, skated out of it when I suggested it. Put a couple tons of bentonite only to have it leak what water I put in. Got a hand tamper and did what I could, held kinda some water. Wiated a year or so then called him and said we got to do something here, a few grand spent so far. He says call this place out of Bozeman that specalizes in pond building, should have done that from the start instead of worrying about helping local. Anyway another few grand and now I have a pond that holds, he sThis summers plan is to put a pump in and run that water into an old abandoned irrigation ditch that I lined, it will go through a bunch of rocks and plants, collect in a pool and them pumped back into the pond through a waterfall I'll make. I have pumps and solar generators for each, inflow and out flow. Give a bit of water flow and filtration too. Have an aerator on the bottom as well.Pond guy said he's grown some big trout in that type setup. I want bluegills and such too because that's what was in my grandparents ponds. Something like this really is a neat addition to the place, Thanks for the replies
Sounds like you are installing an oversized bog filter. They are pretty good at filtering large quantities of water. I am familiar with them due to aquascape designs. Good resource for information. Many blogs have a perforated pipe attached to a sump. It is handy to have the sump big enough to fit a pump every now and then to remove excess sediment.
Agree with the comments about coattails in the pond itself. If they get out of hand, cutting below the waterline at a specific time of year will drown them. In Minnesota late July to early August is about right. Your area may vary. It sounds strange drowning a cattail, but it is around a 90 percent kill rate if timed correctly.
Is it a butly liner ?
For your original question. The pond should provide plenty of food for the minnows on its own. I would probably not drink a cup of tap water that has been sitting on my deck for a month because there is most likely stuff living in that water. Spiking the pond to promote algae as already suggested or throwing in some fish food every now and then will probably help build the minnow population faster.
With an aerator the bluegill and trout will do just fine in ten feet of water. Run that aerator in the winter too. Winterkill is caused by ice trapping toxic gas in the pond. The aerator will blow hole in the ice and allow the toxic gas to escape. Have a customer with 16 koi that range from 10" - 20" long. They overwinter in a 36" deep, - approx. 4000 gallon pond. In the twelve years I have cleaned it in the spring I have only ever found one dead fish. That pond is older than 12 years as was the dead fish. Quite likely the fish died of old age.
Sounds like a fun pond
