Thread: Swimming Pool to Fish Pond

Pool's never used, is a chore and expensive to maintain so am turning it into a fish pond.
Question is, what will I need to keep the water clear enough to be able to see the (tiny) mozzie eating fish/not look like crap after a year or two? The swimming pool pump cost a lot to run (doubled bill) - another good reason for the transformation.

Thank you for all and any advice

Depending on how big the pool, plants diverse fish population and a fountain with a filter might be enough.
You would need habitat (rocks etc) bottom feeders, shellfish, fish that feed on rock algea, others that eat surface scum, a few small predators.

Go see the fish tank/filter people.

Whatever you do, make sure it is not modified too much so that you can't easily turn it back into a swimming pool in the future - A swimming pool is a feature that increases the value of many houses when it comes to selling them.

Shade. Sunlight is your biggest problem.

There was a segment on a TV show here in Oz about this recently - Ku-ring-gai council in Sydney has a program encouraging people to turn their unused pools into fish ponds.

Ah, my post count is not high enough to post a link. But a search on 'ku ring gai pool to pond' should find it.

Cheers

The pool's only 4.5 x 6. It has a sandstone surround which kind of lends itself to being a fish pond. However, want low low maintenance, so thanks necron, but the Underwater World is out of the question It also has some trees around it which guards against sunlight, but I could throw in a couple more. Yes I was thinking it could be turned back into a swimming pool, if Hell froze over and I were to sell.

So a pump? Small submersible? And filtration? How much we talking do you think? House's been a money pit already.

Sell the house instead?

The filters here are just plastic barrels with gravel and ,matting inside, cheap as, few thousand for a large one.
6 or 7 k for the pump.

If you want low maintenance diversity helps, not hinders. Plants clean the water, suckers clean the rocks or walls, shellfish eat the fish shit.

The Koiphen site has a lot (too much) on pond construction and maintenance, but you may get some idea what a koi pond requires from it. Looks like it could d be expensive


Swimming Pool To Pond Build

Thanks for the links guys. I looked at the multi paged thread on predominantly koi ponds and gave up after page 4, yes, it does look expensive, probably as much as the swimming pool to run, which I want to avoid at all costs (no pun intended ).

However! Searched the ku ring gai pool to pond and came up with a bunch of stuff, including this link to a Youtube vid , with some other very helpful links to associated vids in the side bar, so thanks for that

It's funny that people are willing to shell out over and above for a pool, I was told by some builder guy that the pool might be a downside to selling the house, I was taken aback at the time, but I'm guessing there're many of us who would never have bothered with the bloody thing once the novelty had worn off and the amount of work needed to maintain it (every day) and the doubling of the electric bill, for something nobody ever uses any more.

Right, couple of lotus and some minnows then Thanks again.