I Made A Mini River / Stream Pond For My Aquarium Fish!

Today we are going to build the stream pond. This pond is going to utilize a couple of different methods that I actually haven't ever used before. It's another beautiful day, but we have to start it off with going to Lowe's because we need to buy a couple of things and I'm hoping that it's not too expensive. I know at least one of the things that we have to buy is like annoyingly expensive, but I don't think it's going to be that bad. Expensive pond liner, check. Uh, and then we got this thing, right? Which is actually really weirdly dusty. Like I'm rubbing it on my belly and I'm getting stuff on my white shirt. Uh, so I'm going to hose this thing off like really good before we use it, even though it doesn't really matter because of course that pond liner is going to be in this thing and hopefully I can do it in a good enough way to where we don't have to use up a ton of this stuff and we can reuse some of it on a different pond later. I kind of can't believe that I haven't ever used pond liner stuff for any of these small ponds. Like, I mean, we don't obviously need to if we're doing just like a little plastic pond, but this is going to kind of open up the doors to doing things in like the, just the wood barrel realm of things, which I think is pretty cool. I never have done it because it was this extra cost of buying the pond liner. I'm not trying to cover the whole inside of a pond with flex seal. I think that probably might be even more expensive, but yeah, this is going to be kind of a shot in the dark. I did a little bit of research on how we're supposed to fold this thing for the corners. Um, but I have no idea how this is going to go. I'm gonna let that thing dry for a little bit, but I wanted to show you this in the meantime because the timing was perfect. So earlier this morning, pulled all of the rice fish out of this tub, put them into here. And at this point it's been a few hours. All of the females should not have any eggs on them. They should all be on the mops. There's three females in here, one male, the males only in here because I accidentally grabbed him. Sometimes it's easier to just grab them all. Um, it doesn't really matter. It shouldn't affect how many eggs we end up with on the mops. But as you can see, there's a bunch on this one. There's a few more on this guy. And then this dude over here, how many eggs? There's a few. So it looks like this one was just preferentially deposited on. And now all we have to do is try and grab the fish out of here. One handed, get them back into their pond, let them go through another day cycle and do the same thing tomorrow morning. And again, we do it like that because if we didn't, the females would just deposit their eggs onto other things in that pond because we do have a few other things in here that they could put their eggs on. So if the water was a little bit higher, come on camera. If the water was a little bit higher, like up over this pot, they could just swim in here. They'd rub their eggs on those little pieces of plants. They could still do it on some of the random plants that are in here. Probably the algae masses that are still floating around in here from when this thing was getting too much sun. So this is just the surefire method at really harvesting those eggs and getting the most amount of fry possible. And it lets you have that little extra balance of not having a super bare, like ugly looking pond. Like we get to enjoy some nice grasses in here. And it gives me something a little extra to do every morning. And I just personally enjoy it. A rice fish pond that we set up last weekend is looking pretty good. Let's get a little surface temp just real quick. Check it out. It's about three o'clock only 76 that's surprising because today's like 80 get these out of the way from the project behind me. But we also got some variegated water celery in here. This is one of my favorite pond plants has these cool little leaves that have this pink flare to them and this grows a lot and rapidly. So I'm excited to have that little bush of it in there, but yeah, not much else to say about this spot. The rice fish all look like they're having a good time in here. Duck butt still there as well. Threw a mop in here for him just basically for no reason. Cause I think it's just cool to have mops in everything, you know, and got a little koi fish statue. Got that for my birthday. So kind of nice little chill spot. Got a few of my bushes planted too. So we have more work to do on this area. I don't know if the pond that we're building today is going to live over here, but it could, but this pond isn't going to be for any kind of rice fish. It's going to be for our mountain minnows. Hence why we're trying to create a little stream. We're going to have some flow in here and I think this is a cool design. Something different for me. If I had to guess, I'd say this thing is going to hold 18 gallons of water. That's without me doing any kind of measurements. I'm not cheating. I promise that's just my eyeball guesstimate. We'll find out exactly how much this holds when we're all said and done here, but let me know dropping in the comments, how many gallons you think this thing is going to hold. It's like, I know it's hard to judge the size of it, but if I had to guess, I'd say this is three and a half feet wide. Maybe this is four feet. I don't know. See, I didn't measure. It's about, uh, hand wide. Anyway, that doesn't really matter. Let's uh, let's get into our pond liner here. I hope I don't mess this up because this thing did cost like $53. So after my first go at this, I realized that there were some staples that were sticking out of this thing. They could be a point at which the pond lighter could rip. So I went through a hammered those out. There's also these drain holes here. I decided to leave those the way they are hoping that's not going to be an issue, but just made sure everything was super smooth to prevent anything bad from happening. So once that was done back to putting the pond lighter back in, and this part was a little difficult because the liner that I'm using is super flimsy and floppy. It's not very thick. Um, I think you would have a lot easier time if your pond liner was more of a professional grade one, but I'm sure that would then be much more expensive and this thing was expensive enough. This took me a lot longer than it probably looks here, but just making sure everything was super smooth. I then went back to the video of this dude that was folding a pond lighter and making it look really easy. Again, his was a lot thicker and it looks like it's a lot easier to work with. So just trying to fold the corners in like he was doing. I think that's just how you're supposed to do it. I just did my best here. So I managed to get some of the corners folded. Okay. There's still a lot of excess liner that we need to trim off obviously. And then we have the little ridge here that we're going to then staple that liner to. So the way to do this, I think if you want to do it the best way possible is to have a separate piece of wood to then staple through. But because this is a small pond and I don't think there's going to be a lot of tension on these staples, I decided to just put in the staples and that's it. So went around the pond as I kind of had things the way I wanted it and put some staples in as we circle around this thing. Just trying to make sure everything stays in place and is going to work out. I, again, this is not a demonstration on how to install a pond liner. I've never done this before. Um, and so just bear with me. This is probably not the best way to do it at this point. I think I had pretty much everything the way that it should be. Like it was seated well in the bottom. Um, but these flaps are pretty big. And as you can see, there's a lot of space in there. A fish could swim in there. So I'm already thinking about how we're going to resolve that. And I just moved on to trimming the excess liner off cause I thought it would be a little bit easier to work with, right? Like this stuff is kind of impossible. Um, so scissors for that and then a razor blade to sort of trim everything to that bottom lip that you can't really see cause it's up under that portion of the pond. This again was a step that I had to be very careful with because if you drop the razor blade or you are just not paying enough attention and make just like a, an accidental cut down into the liner, then you're going to be starting over again. So eventually I got everything pretty close to the way I want it. There's still some excess like fine trimming that I could do, but I was happy with where I was at this point. Now all we got to do is deal with those flaps. So we're going to be just siliconing those in place, but I need something to put some pressure on it just to hold it still. So cut some pool noodles and then just ran some 100% silicone into the corners. Um, just sort of shot it in there. Didn't really pay much attention to how much I was putting in. Just tried to get it as close to the edge as possible and then secured those pool noodles in there, wedged them in. Yet another really good use for the pool noodle here. And at that point we pretty much just had to wait for everything to dry up. Let's go see how we did on our flap job. So many uses for pool noodles. Um, let's see here. Flaps look, flaps look closed. Kind of hard to tell if we got, eh, there's still a little bit. I think it's going to be okay. Not nearly as bad as it was. Like I don't think a fish is going to be able to get up inside that. Now we just have to see if this thing holds water. So big what if, I don't know, I dropped the razor blade a couple of times into the center of this thing while I was trying to cut the edges. So cross your fingers. All right, I'm going to stop it here cause it's pretty much up to the top here. It's not perfectly level in this spot, so we don't want to accidentally start overflowing it. Let's check it out. What did I say? 18, 14. So we got 14 gallons in this thing. Maybe a little bit more. It's probably just a 15 gallon planter, right? Things you've got to remember. If you put any pond plants in there, you put a pot, right? It's going to displace a decent amount of volume. Um, but I don't think that's going to hurt us in the grand scheme of things. We're not really trying to hit a certain gallons of water for this pond, but it's just, I just think it's mostly a good thing to know about your pond. So that's one way to do it. It is super thin though. So I'm a little sketched out about it. I'm going to let this thing sit here for, I don't know, a few hours. And then we're going to see like, hopefully there's no leaks, right? Like you just, you'd never know. And look, you can see the little indents from the drain holes where the pond liner is pushing in. Hopefully that's not something that becomes a problem for us. It could be something that it takes a few days for it to leak, or maybe it will never leak ever. That's what I'm really hoping for. But regardless, I think it turned out pretty good. Like I still didn't really trim the corners perfectly. I forgot to do that part this morning, but I see potential in it. And I think the fish that end up living in this thing are really going to like it. All right. It's been like three hours. I think no leaks. Everything's looking good. I'm just going to pretend like it's never going to leak. I mean, let's be real. If we stabbed it with the razor blade in a weird spot, it would definitely be leaking by now. So the only other explanation for a leak would just be like time and a pressure point that something happens, but we can't, we can't plan for that. So I'm going to move this thing and put it in the spot that I think it's going to be for a while. Not a hundred percent. Sure. Probably end up moving this thing later, but that's the beauty of these small ponds. A few things that I want to do before we put water back into this thing in the new spot is get the substrate figured out and also kind of like toy around with what sort of micro environment we want to make for our rainbow shiners. I can't stress enough the importance of washing whatever substrate you're going to use as good as you can. Like you don't do this, grab a little clamp and hook this on and just let it run for 10, 15 minutes. This is going to ensure that the water is super, super clear. You won't have to want to do a water change right when you get things set up. And it's just what I do for pretty much any type of sand or gravel that I'm using. So we are using the Monterey beach sand like we always do. I think this is going to be an okay type of sand to use. Sorry about the sun. Um, I'm not really sure what color is going to be best for the minnows, right? So the substrate is going to be the backdrop of the fish and kind of I'm thinking black might be a better choice. Like with the Medaka is how it just makes sense to use black and have that be the contrasting backdrop for white fish. I'm not sure how these are going to look with the lighter substrate, but I'm going to just go for it. Mostly because I don't have any black sand right now and I'm not trying to go buy any. So we're going to use this stuff. Probably good enough. You can always get it clearer, but let's get this in the pond. I think that's going to be enough. I totally just winged it, but we're not going to, I don't think we're really going to be planting any plants down here. So we just need like really a thin layer. Just a barely half an inch would be plenty. I mean, who knows? Maybe we'll plant some stuff in here. Always want to have the option. So a little bit deeper, no big deal. The most important part of the stream pond is obviously going to be the water flow, but we want to try and create like a little stream down at the bottom too. Let's grab some of this stuff. This is I think going to provide the perfect little breeding area slash micro environment for them. I need some bigger rocks too. Not the most impressive pond scape ever, but it is a little different than some of the things that I've done before. So I was happy with it, right? The last thing that we have to do is get the water ready for our fish. So we need to de-chlorinate this water since we just added it, of course using the Fritz pond guard. And we're also going to throw in some nitrifying bacteria. You guys know that Fritz makes the best nitrifying bacteria in the game. So we're going to do both to this thing. Just getting it ready. If you have chloramine in your water, you can't wait. I mean, you could, you could wait like a couple of weeks for it to treat itself, but, but we want to make this pond really safe right away and ensure its longevity. So we will be adding some pond plants to this as well. But now with this step done, we can pretty much add our fish right away. I think for plants, we want to keep it pretty simple with this pond. So I'm just going to grab some grasses that I have access to over in the rice fish tub that needs to get a total rehaul anyway. So just a couple grasses in the corners, I think is going to look really good. Keeping it simple, I think is the key here. So these are some plants that I've had for a long time. One of them is one we got at the garden center a few weeks ago. These are really going to help us with not only introducing some good bacteria, not just nitrifiers, but other organisms as well. And they're going to help to pull down the nitrate concentration as that builds up over time. My minnows are very skittish. The only way I can get them to really come out and do anything is if I feed them. So we just threw in some legit nano and they're starting to feast on it. But as you can tell, uh, they don't look like this and I'm kind of okay with that. Like maybe I'm coping, but I have faith that these fish might continue to color up. They have colored up a little bit since we got them. I think once we get them outside and they get that like real daytime, like extended daylight thing going on in their brains, then I think they're really going to start to change the way that they look at least the males, right? Once they start to get into that breeding behavior realm because of the light exposure and the temperature, I'm really hoping that these fish will just blow me away, but still kind of up in the air. Um, I think I have a line on getting some really fantastic, amazing minnows that I think are going to blow you guys away. So be on the lookout for that video. Don't know when I'm going to get them or when that video is going to come out, but it'll happen this season for sure. I think these fish in the meantime are going to make the stream pond very, very cool. So again, these fish are ones that I was told in the comments and did a little bit more research on them. They do like to have a faster pace moving water. Like we're not getting that much flow. Out of this little aquarium co-op sponge filter is plugged up of course, but they could use a little bit more. I think along with probably some more rock rubble and just to encourage more of their natural behavior, give them something that there would be more accustomed to if these were wild fish. So I'm going to grab a collection cup and we're going to get these fish ready to go into their new home. Fish acquired. The only thing that's left in that tank is that random Daniel that we got. We got all of our really cool rainbow shiners that will hopefully one day be 10 times cooler and more colorful. One of these dudes looks like he's missing an eye. This guy right here. Like I don't know what the deal is with that. We'll probably take him out, put him back in here for observation. Everybody else looks good. Sorry. I wasn't expecting that, but yeah, let's go put them in their new pond. I almost forgot the most important part of this whole stream pond in that is the thing that's going to make it a stream. So we're going to be using a solar pump for this. These things are super hit and miss. You can find them on Amazon, but the listings don't live very long. It doesn't seem like, but they do work pretty good. And I think for even this little four foot stream, the little pump that we have here, I don't know. I think it's like six Watts. I think it's going to be pretty good. Only issue was we had to figure out a different way to connect it. So just threw in a staple. It's not going to suction cup to the liner. So this is going to be cool. It's going to let us adjust how much oxygenation we want to try and achieve in this pond. We can just slide it up and down. And I think our rainbow shiners are really going to enjoy that. These are fish that do like to have a little bit of water movement and more oxygenation. And we can achieve that both with having a pump in here. It's the next morning. Let's check out our fish, see how they did on their first night. Get a temp check. Got a little chilly last night down to 55, but these fish should be able to take that. No problem. They are currently hiding from me, still getting used to their new little pond tank here. They're kind of all hiding in the back right now, but I don't see any that jumped out, which was something I was a little concerned about because these are fish that are going to jump. So we have to be careful. There is a little gap here, but I'm sure if they really wanted to, they could jump out of this. So just something to keep in mind. I actually saw a couple skirt underneath the real little rock pile that we made. So that's pretty cool. That's exactly what we did it for. So that's going to kind of encourage them to breed. That's kind of like what they like to do. They like to go and find these little rock piles and do their thing down there. That was the idea. And so that's what I'm hoping they're going to do. And yeah, once the sun pops through this little corner here, our solar pumps going to activate itself and the stream pond is going to be alive again. So, I mean, that's, that's kind of the whole thing that I wanted to do here guys. And I think we've accomplished it. So really crossing my fingers that these fish will color up now that they're in this type of environment. They're subject to the sun, the longer days and the warmer temperatures compared to what they were exposed to in the fish room. There's one hiding down here. Let's see if we can coax them out. They're such a fast fish, but I think that's really cool for this type of setup. Like we get to lean over and see fish sort of shoaling around and darting back and forth. And this sort of dimension for the pond, I think is perfect for that because it gives them a runway. They can go back and forth, just add in some more impressive colors. And I think I'm going to be really happy with this one. I'm stoked that we got to get this thing set up and that it doesn't leak. The maintenance on this pond should be pretty straightforward, really simple. So we don't really need to do anything over the next few days. Like we did everything that we should have done. So we added in established plants. These things are going to have plenty of nitrifying bacteria on them to get everything started on top of the fact that we added in those cultures of the nitrifying bacteria. So this thing is basically turbocharged. I don't think we're going to have to worry about any kind of nitrogen. These grasses are going to rapidly grow and they're going to consume nitrate and everything else that's in this thing. So it's going to help to keep the environment safe. We shouldn't have to really even keep tabs on it. Although I might dunk a test strip in every once in a while here over the next few weeks, just to make sure water changes are going to be few and far between. It really just depends on how much physical waste builds up, how much food I decide to feed these rainbow shiners. So if we end up with piles of it in the corner, that wouldn't be uncommon. I might get in here and just kind of like spot siphon it out. Beyond that, the only other thing that could happen is a really bad algae bloom of some sort like the location of this pond is in a spot where it gets a lot of light. If we do end up having some algae issues here, which I don't think are impossible. We could always just move this thing. That's the beauty of these small ponds. The versatility as far as finding the right spot where everything is happy. So keeping an eye on water temperature, depending on how hot it's going to be, this is one that could heat up quite a bit. So I'll be keeping an eye on this thing over the next few weeks just to make sure the fish are okay and everybody's happy. And that's pretty much it. If you're new to ponds or this is the first video that you've seen on something like this, I'm sure you have a lot more questions that I didn't maybe bring up in today's video. So I'll put a link for like the most comprehensive patio pond video that I tried to make. I made it a few weeks ago and I think it should answer pretty much all of your questions. But if you want to drop a comment down below, don't be shy. I'll try and get to it ASAP. Just know that that video is going to encompass probably everything that you might want to know. So yeah, I think that's it for today's video guys. Thanks for hanging out with me over the last couple of days getting this done. We got some more ponds to go set up over on the other side of the house. Got some more projects to do. I'm not sure what next week's video is going to be, but hopefully it's a cool one that you enjoy. Thanks again for watching and we'll see you next time.