How To Make A Container Pond - Stock Tank Pond - Solar Powered!

hey folks welcome to the do-it-yourself dad Channel today I'm out here by the my favorite part of my yard this is my koi pond but we're actually gonna be doing something up in the front yard we're gonna be building a container pond today to bring something like this up to the front and something that you can do if you don't have room for a koi pond like this and there's only a few things you need so let me show you how we're gonna get this whole thing done now the beautiful thing about a container pond is you can use just about anything that can hold water we're gonna be using this stock tank we picked this thing up a while back we're finally gonna turn it into a pond this one is 6 foot by 2 foot by about a foot and a half deep and something just to consider is the bigger you get your pond the more water it's gonna have in it and it's actually gonna make it easier to maintain it the more water that it contains you're gonna have less temperature swings from day to night and whatnot especially if you're planning on having fished it you could even use something smaller like a wagon and line it I've seen people do that I've seen people make things out of smaller pots like these but this one we're gonna do out of something big now coming back over here we're gonna be using this and I'm actually gonna get a couple more of these once this is all done but this is a solar-powered pump this thing is really not powerful enough for this so I'm gonna actually get a couple more once this thing gets going but you are gonna need some form of water circulation so the water doesn't get stagnant I've got a link for this and actually bigger solar pumps in the description below the nice thing about the solar pumps is if you don't have wiring to where you're going or say you want to do this in the middle of a counter or a tabletop outside you don't have to worry about running that so let's get the area prepped I'm going to show you how we're gonna do that we're gonna fill it with water get the pump go and get some plants in it make yourself a nice little water feature up in the front yard now there's a couple things to consider when you're deciding where you're going to put your container you want it on a nice a level area or an area that you can get level so the water isn't tipping to one side or the other and you want an area that gets a fair amount of shade because the temperature is gonna swing in this thing a lot and the more sunlight it gets the faster it's going to grow algae so we have this thing in our front yard it's directly beside a large tree and then we've got another bush over here so it does get a fair amount of shade but the other thing to think about is that tree drops leaves so we are gonna have to deal with leaves getting in it so if you're ok with that that's fine otherwise you're going to want to pick an area where it won't get leaves maybe underneath in Eve of a house so we're going to get this area kind of cleared out we're gonna level the area then we're gonna move that into the area now as with most projects you're going to be doing the most important part of this is the prep you want to make sure the ground around your container Pond is perfectly level the wider or the larger your pond the more pronounced it'll be if you're a little bit off a little bit of off will result in an inch or two of water difference at either side of the pond and you don't want that so take your time make sure the ground is leveled you can see here I'm using a straight edge with a bubble level to make sure it's level if you don't have that there's actually apps on your phone that you can download you can put the edge of your phone on the edge of your container and make sure it's perfectly level so now with this level let's move on to the next step all right so we've got our container pond about half full with water now and we're gonna stop because now is the time when we get to do the fun part and that is adding plants now you can go down to your local nursery or pond supply store and buy plants but I wouldn't do that usually if you have a neighbor or a friend that has a pond they are constantly having to pull stuff out of their pond and that's actually the hidden agenda behind me building this is I need a place to put my extra plants especially my duck weed my fish eat duck weed like crazy and I like to feed it to them but they'll actually eat all of it so I'm gonna grow it in here and move it into the pond when they're hungry and they want to eat some but check on Craigslist to check on Facebook marketplace chances are there's somebody in your area that's got a koi pond that would be happy to give you some free stuff so let's get some plants in here and we're gonna put some lily pads and some duck weed and a few other neat things in here so let's get started on that alright so I'm gonna start off by showing you how I plant lily pads so if you get them from a friend or a neighbor or somebody off Craigslist you're gonna get something like this and this is the root piece and you can see here they actually come apart and this is a very small one and there's one little guy there we're gonna plant this big one because there's a lot of stuff coming off of it so what we're gonna do is we're gonna plant it in these buckets now you can go down to your dollar store I got this from the Dollar Tree you do not need something with drainage on the bottom in a pond application you actually want something without drainage on the bottom so we are going to use this to put it in and they usually route themselves in clay soil the easiest way to get that is right at your Dollar Tree again kitty litter you want to get non-scented clay kitty litter if you can get low dust that's better because you're gonna have to rinse it but it doesn't really matter you just want to make sure you get something that doesn't have additives in it you don't want cents and all that garbage you just want straight kitty litter we are gonna want to rinse it because it can get dusty you can see the dust is probably coming off it right there but the problem with it is that it'll also cloud up the water in your pond so now we've got about half of our bag in there and the other half here cleaned out and I've got a little bit of this pond plant fertilizer you want to put it down in there you don't need this but it doesn't hurt it can help a little bit with getting these things going so if you do want to use that I have a link for that in the description below but it's not necessary it's just helpful so now to plant these these usually grow off of one end they tend to branch out in places but we're going to take the end that has leaves already on it and we're going to try to keep those leaves above the clay and all this stuff down in the clay so we're going to kind of bury that one end in hold those leaves up and then we can dump the rest on top just kind of work that clay around and you want to get good coverage in there make sure it's nice and level and now another optional thing you can do and I like to do this is to put a layer of gravel on top of that that helps hold all this down so you don't get the clay pieces all over the inside of your pond but again that's optional you don't have to do that and now it's time to add our first set of lily pads to their new home when you add them in there you want to add them real slow so you don't disturb the clay let the water kind of slowly get in there and it'll still turn a little cloudy and that's okay and then once it's in there those lily pads if you have any will float and sometimes they're tangled so you want to help them untangle themselves a little bit if they're not all the way to the surface that is fine these things grow at an amazingly fast rate if you put them in here like this two three days and they'll be up at the surface so let's put a few more in [Music] [Music] so now we've got three of our pots in I'm probably gonna put two more in here as time goes on but these are the lily pads that I've got to work with right now and then you can see this stuff the green stuff in here this is actually duck weed I'm gonna be moving some of this stuff into here to fill up the rest of this thing and that the duck lead will actually help cover the surface so we don't get a big algae bloom going on in here it's kind of almost like sunscreen but right now let's throw the hose in we're gonna bring the water level up a little bit higher and then we'll start working on getting some water circulation with that pump in here all right so now it's time to deal with the pump now these little pumps this thing honestly is not gonna do the job for this thing but it'll suit for the time being and it does have the nice little solar panel feature which is pretty cool so that means I don't run a wire over to this thing yet I'll probably just run a couple of these but the problem with these is because they don't pull a lot of water it doesn't have enough suction power to pull anything through that if anything gets in the way of that so we're gonna build a little filter box here which is a good idea no matter what kind of pump you're gonna do now the first thing to do is go into your kitchen and steal one of these distract everybody else you don't get yelled at for taking the Ziploc containers and we are going to pop the lid off get our handy drill and we're gonna get a drill bit on this thing that's going to be about the diameter of the little hose here so you're gonna want to drill a hole right smack in the middle of your lid that you can then feed the hose through so we've got our hose going right through there we can have our little spray head and you can use all the different they got a bunch of different kinds of spray heads on these but so we've got that and now what we're gonna do is we're gonna switch drill bits to a much smaller drill bit and we're gonna start drilling holes all the way around this thing to let water into it [Music] so that's a good start to our filter box and now let's get some growl fill this thing with gravel and we're actually going to put the pump right in the middle of all the gravel [Music] just like so once you get that figured out we're gonna add in a little bit more gravel around it make a little hole in the middle for your pump and we're gonna seal the whole thing up our solar panel is actually in the shade right now and the fountain is already doing a pretty cool little job there so we'll see what's happened in tomorrow once we get some good Sun on this thing so give it a week or two these lily pads are gonna fill in great we're gonna have lily flowers in the pond it's gonna look amazing so this video helped you out it I'll be sure to hit that subscribe button so we've got a lot more awesome stuff coming your way and go down below we leave me a comment let me know what kind of videos you'd like to see on the channel and of course thanks for watching

Channel: DoItYourselfDad

Views: 57,052

Rating: 4.8153844 out of 5

Keywords: Do It Yourself, DIY, Do It Yourself Dad, DoItYourselfDad, container pond, stock tank pond, how to make a container pond, how to make a stock tank pond, patio pond, water fountain, pot pond, backyard pond, solar powered pond, solar powered pond pump, solar pump, mini pond, water gardens, pond plants, water garden, solar fountain, patio pond with fish, patio pond diy, patio pond ideas, patio pond filter, patio pond setup, patio pond plants, water feature, pot pond ideas

Id: QndA2r5SS2A

Length: 10min 27sec (627 seconds)

Published: Sat May 23 2020