Epic Mini Pond For Viewing Plants and Fish Above Water (DIY Aquagarden)

I've been planning to do a mini pond build for quite a while now, especially considering it's summer. However, I did a few iterations of various types of builds and none of them were really turning out how I'd like. However, I think I came up with a solution that's pretty cool and should be quite easy to pull off. The primary component that will make this all possible is this 14 gallon tote. I got this at Home Depot for $12.50, so it's a pretty reasonable buy. In addition to that, these come in an array of sizes, both smaller and larger than these ones, so you have options. The thing to keep in mind though is that if you go with a larger one, say 55 gallons, once it's full with water, it's going to want to bow out on the front and back like this. So some amount of bracing will be necessary, but on a small one like this, I won't need to do anything. Even so, I will be building a frame around the top and bottom here, so I can build a facade around the outside. As is, the plastic doesn't look that good, but I have something that will make it look much better. For that, I'll be using some cedar fence planks. Believe it or not, these are actually fairly inexpensive and they'll be perfect for the job. I'll tell you more about them later on, but in the meantime, we'll build that frame. As you just saw, I ripped down various boards to the appropriate widths on the table saw, as well as to the appropriate length on the miter saw. I did this to create the most optimal fit possible. You'll see that these skinny ones fit around this lip right here, and then I have the wider ones, which fit in this area here. I am going to cut more boards to go in between these, but before I can do that, I need to attach these pieces together. And after all of that, these fit perfectly around the outside. As I said before, I'm going to put some boards in between these, and what I'll use are some scrap two by threes. I'm going to cut these all down to the appropriate length, and we'll get them secured. That all left me with this wooden frame, which fits perfectly over the bin, or maybe I should say almost perfect. You'll see that it fits exactly as I intended, but this lip protrudes up past the board. Now that's an issue because I wanted them to lay flat, but it's an easy fix. I'll secure some plywood that's the exact thickness of that over top of the main structure. That minor adjustment allows the bin to fit perfectly into it, and everything is flush. However, I want this lifted slightly up off the ground so that I can have casters under it, which will make it easy to move around the room as needed. This creates another issue, though. What you'll see is that if I press on the bottom, it kind of flexes a little bit. Now, if this was laying flat on the ground, again, it wouldn't be an issue, but when this is filled up with water, it's going to be constantly bowed down like this, so I should probably add some support. So what I'll do to address that is simple. I'm going to put down some glue here, and then secure a piece of three-quarter inch thick plywood to the bottom. Now, if you recall, this is actually the same exact material. It's scraps left over from whenever I made the terrarium computer desk, so that's kind of cool. I'm really pleased with how it moves around now. This bottom area is nice and stable, and everything just fits together perfectly. That means I can move on and add the cedar boards to the side. Covering this will be pretty straightforward. I want this board to go all the way up to the very top of the container. That's simple enough, and then same deal with this one down here. The only thing, though, is that the casters, I want them to be completely hidden, or for the most part. So I'm actually going to have to rip down these boards so that I can do three of them instead of two. It stinks because it was basically a perfect fit with two of them, but I got to work around it so that it looks as good as possible. I got them all ripped down accordingly. Remove the factory edge because you can't trust those, and I got these ones chopped down to the appropriate width of the sides. I'll secure the side boards first, and then I'm going to remeasure for everything on the front and back, and I'll get those cut down accordingly. I got the sides looking good, which means we can move on to the front and back. It's looking to be about 30. It's a good thing I went and did a test fix. I noticed an issue over here on this side. All the boards sit flush except for this area right here. I suppose it's really not that big of a deal, but I want things to look as clean as possible. The easiest way around it is just to sand all of this down. I was trying to avoid sanding at all costs prior to doing the entire facade, but of course it crept its way in there. So I got that addressed. I'm going to get these pieces attached, and then we'll address the other side. I got this thing completely covered on the exterior, and it's looking awesome. I got to add some boards to the top here though, which I already ripped down to the appropriate width. I'll cut them at a 45, attach them, and then we'll finish this thing up. And now we have the completed wood structure. It looks pretty great, but if we take a closer look at the wood, you'll see that it's pretty rough. Now I could leave it like this if I'd want a more rustic appearance, but I want it to look nice. And thus begins the arduous process of sanding. I'm not going to bore you with all the details, but I'll start out with 60 grit and work my way up to 120 to get a really fine finish. Man, that was a lot of work. About two hours later and I finally got the finish that I wanted. It's always a lot of work, but it's very much worth it, especially when you take a rough board like this and you transform it into something like this. It's one of the reasons why I love woodworking. You just get a raw material like this that's a diamond in the rough, so to speak. Put a little bit of work and elbow grease into it and you get something that looks awesome. Now I could use this exactly like that because cedar is naturally water resistant, so there's really no need to seal it or anything like that. But a little bit of a finish is going to make that color pop and really just make that wood shine. The thing is though that originally I was thinking to use linseed oil. This is a pretty common finish for cedar. It makes it pop and everything like that, but it will take about three days to do the process properly and I don't have that kind of time. So I decided that I'll just put a clear matte spray on it. I cannot wait to see how this brings the wood to life. I should mention real quick though that I got this all taped up on the inside just so I don't apply any of that to the plastic anyway. Oh yeah. Man I gotta say that just really makes it pop and not too shabby for some cheap fence boards if you ask me. All of that really brought it together and allows the wood to shine. Typically I like to stain things to make them all cohesive and everything like that, but I think moving forward if I'm using something like cedar or other types of woods that have cool features, I should capitalize on them instead of hiding them with a stain. I mean this coloration is absolutely beautiful and it was just highlighted by adding that finish. I'm just about ready to start scaping this, but I have to address filtration and lighting first. Whenever I originally started this project, my first idea was to have some sort of internal filtration with baffles and overflow, that sort of thing. But as I went through this build I figured I should probably keep it simple, especially once you see what I'm doing here in a little bit and a sponge filter seemed like the way to go. I could simply drop the filter into the pond and drape the airline over the side like this, but it looks kind of sloppy. Instead I'll just drill a hole through the side here and then run it in between this and the wood, which should look pretty clean. As for lighting, I've got this LED plant light. It's pretty bright so it should work perfectly. And then you'll notice I have this box here as well. I built it the same way as the main structure. Cut down some boards, glued and nailed them together, sanded it all down, and finished it off to look like this. If we flip this over you'll see that the light fits perfectly inside of it. I thought this would make it blend better with everything else, but I also have to mount this above the pond. I decided to do something a little different and I'm going to use some copper pipe for that. Might sound weird but it will make sense here in just a little bit. I made a tutorial on something similar to this years ago with PVC pipe. Basically what this allows me to do is run the wire through the pipes so that way it's completely hidden. And so the way this all works is that you feed the wire through as you assemble the pieces. And then I plug the light in and lock it in place. I'm really glad I decided to make the light this way. I think it just goes with the piece so well. I love the overhang and the copper just adds a really unique look as well. Originally my intent was to polish the copper. I thought it would look really cool if it was nice and shiny, but as I see it now I actually think that the patina looks pretty cool. What do you think? I'm really excited to finally get down into the pond area, but there's one thing that I almost forgot and that was to install the mini air pump. My idea and vision behind this was to include a lot of plants. And sure we do planted aquariums all the time and it's cool to view them from the sides of the glass, but seeing everything from the top is a totally different experience and exactly what I wanted to showcase with this build. Now the obvious thing would be to just put the substrate down in here, plant directly into it, and call it a day. With that though I think it could make maintenance a little challenging and I want some modularity here. So the easiest solution that I came up with was simply to use some terracotta pots. Now you notice down in the bottom of them that I have a little bit of mesh. That's just some knitting mesh that I secured with the stainless steel wire to keep all the substrate in these. Anyway the idea behind these is that I can arrange them in whatever formation I'd like, pull them out to do maintenance and trim the plants, easily put them back, and move them around at whatever time I'd like to change up the look of this. In my mind that makes the most sense and the simplicity of it really goes with this build. Like I said before planting substrate isn't needed, but I have some pea pebbles here which I rinsed ahead of time to remove debris that I'll use to conceal the plastic. I don't need much here at all, just enough to create a thin layer that conceals the plastic and evens things out. And in the planter pots I'll just add a little bit of aqua soil. With all that addressed we can finally move on to the plants and I got a beautiful selection here thanks to Flip Aquatics. Now this isn't sponsored or anything like that but I wanted to give them a shout out because I drove out there the other day and selected all of these myself and I'm absolutely loving what I see here. A few highlights are the Taiwan lily over here, Pogostemon stellaris octopus, and some dwarf aquarium lilies. Of course I have much more than that but we'll talk about them some as we go through the rest of this build. I'll also leave a complete list down in the video description for your reference. The way I'll add these is actually based on the plant type so for example I got these lilies here. I'm going to put all of these in a single pot and then I'll put all the stems in a separate one. I'm most likely going to put this one near the sponge filter and I need something that's going to hide that so I think that the stellaris octopus is a good option and the fine leaves will also contrast well with the larger ones of this lily. This one's primarily going to be stem plants. I think a good place to start is with the Rotala indica. I also got some Bacopa which I'll put on the other side since they have similar leaf shapes. With this largest one here I'll do a lot of the plants that arch over like the Taiwan lily and I also pulled some of this Valisneria from one of my other tanks. Before I add these to the pond I'm going to spray down the soil just to remove a little bit of the debris and to pack things down so none of the plants go floating away. And in they go. And that more or less completes the build. Let's get it filled up with water and then we can add the inhabitants. And I do believe that's going to conclude this nano pond build. I don't know about you but I think it's a really cool piece. I love seeing all of the plants from the top and I might actually add more as this goes on. Obviously these are going to need to grow in and they'll really fill in the space even more than they are now but an additional pot might make sense. I also think the black rice fish are the perfect addition to this setup. They're awesome when viewed from the top. Very personable and that sort of thing. They're being a little bit shy right now since I just put them in but give them a little bit of time and they'll do awesome in here. In line with that some of you may be wondering how I put them in this setup immediately. Well I actually swapped out that sponge filter that was in there before with the one that was from their quarantine tank so it's already cycled. Overall though I had a lot of fun with this build. It was really enjoyable to construct. I think the end result is really cool and unique. I want to know your thoughts though. Let me know what you think about everything down in the comments. Leave this video with a thumbs up if you enjoyed it and subscribe for more if you haven't already. As always SerpaSquad, I thank you so much for your continued support. Take care and peace!