Living Ponds

A Balanced Pond With No Pump: Can It Work?

A pond without a pump can hold clear, oxygenated water, as long as the plants and the fish load are matched. It works in a cool, well-planted pond and struggles in a hot, overstocked one.

A Stock Tank Pond: The Easiest Patio Water Garden

A galvanized stock tank makes a pond with no digging: one vessel, a few plants, a small school of cool-water fish. In a 100-gallon tank the balance is the same as a big pond.

Building a Small Pond Ecosystem That Runs Itself

A 50-gallon stock tank can hold clear water, a lily, and a school of minnows for years on plants and snails alone. Here is how to build the closed loop.

Goldfish Pond Setup: Sizing It So It Balances

A common goldfish reaches 8 inches and pushes a heavy bioload, which is why the pet-store bowl is the wrong container by a factor of ten. Size the pond first.

How Much of a Pond Should Be Covered in Plants?

Cover 40 to 60 percent of a pond's surface with plants and the water clears itself. Less than that feeds algae, and more than that starves the open water of gas exchange.

How to Build a Self-Sustaining Pond

A pond with plants shading half its surface and only a few fish will filter and clear itself. The pump is for a waterfall, not for keeping the water alive.

How to Build a Wildlife Pond

A wildlife pond does the opposite of a fish pond: leave the fish out, and frogs, dragonflies, and newts move in within a season. Here is how to build one.

How to Clear Green Pond Water Naturally

Green pond water is not dirt, it is a bloom of single-celled algae feeding on excess nutrients and sunlight. Starve it of both and it clears without a single chemical.

How to Make a Container Pond on a Patio

A half-barrel or a stock tank on a patio, planted to shade half the surface and stocked with a few minnows, balances without a pump. The small volume is the catch.

How to Overwinter a Pond and Its Fish

A pond and its fish overwinter in place if one section is 2 ft deep and a hole stays open in the ice. The cold is not the threat. A sealed, iced-over surface is.

How to Stop Mosquitoes in a Pond, the Living Way

Mosquitoes need still water and about 10 days to breed. A pond with fish and a moving surface never gives them either. Here is how to design them out.

Stocking a Pond With Fish Without Wrecking the Balance

The mistake that breaks a pond is not the wrong fish, it is too many of the right one. Here is how to stock a pond so the biology keeps up.

The Best Oxygenating Pond Plants

A submerged plant releases most of its oxygen straight into the water. The three that do it best also starve the algae that turns a pond green.

The Best Pond Plants for a Clear, Balanced Pond

The best pond plant is the one that shades the water. A clear pond is a light-and-nutrient problem, and plants over 40 to 60 percent of the surface solve most of it.