Hey, Van,
What you have in your back yard is a
potential ticket to disaster. If you are really interested
in the water gardening hobby, your best bet is to pump all
the water out, pull the tarp out and discard it, fill in
the hole and then join a water gardening or koi-keeping
club and start learning about the hobby.
Do not take the filter or pump out of
their boxes unless you are sure that they will do what you
think they will do. That tarpaulin was never designed to
hold water, and it will begin to leak. Your volume may support
a few goldfish, but without aeration your oxygen levels
will not support much in the way of fish health. The small
volume will make the water temperature unstable, in turn
making the pond vulnerable to major fluctuations in pH.
You'll also get considerable drops in alkalinity with each
rainstorm which will give you more pH
problems.
From a pump/filter standpoint, submersible
pumps are a pain to maintain, and fail frequently, usually
due to fouling. The absence of a surface skimmer will guarantee
sludge on the bottom and anaerobic conditions in the sludge;
bad for fish health.
Please read the
articles on pond planning and filtration on our website,
and browse through our "help file" section.
If you live in the Chicago area, come
to our Trade Show this weekend and ask questions.
Trying to maintain what you have will
leave you with a very unfavorable opinion of what can be
a wonderful hobby.
Bob Passovoy
President
MPKS
