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Duck pond advice

10 years ago

So I'm working on building a small duck pond. I have two ducks and I'd like them to be able to hang out together in there and go underwater when they like. I've had kiddie pools that worked fine but I was thinking something a little deeper might be nice. I know how quickly the pool gets dirty and my plan now is to add fish/seaweed emulsion once it gets too dirty and pump the water out to nearby gardens. I would like to set up a way for it to drip out eventually but for now I'm just curious about pumps and liners. I'd like to know what has worked for y'all and if there are any tips/tricks to keeping the pump and liner clean/working as long as possible. Also if there are any concerns with using the duck pond water in garden beds. Should I only use it on fruit trees or can I use it on veggies and how close to harvest should I stop using it? If it's too dangerous for me on stuff I plan to eat, I would be open to having a garden just for the ducks and dogs. I would love to have plants that would filter the water for me but I think the load of the ducks would be too much for that. Anyway, I welcome anyone's suggestions and which things worked or didn't work and which brand of liner/pump worked well for y'all. Also what size you think would work best for me. Right now I was thinking something like a 5' circle and avg. 2' deep.

Comments (2)

  • 10 years ago

    I have no direct experience with your approach, but I may have some useful input. I do have an in pond pump that I do use sometimes for landscape garden watering. I believe the pump was specifically designed for ponds because it has a long power cord, but you could probably use a sump pump instead. They generally have flat bottoms that take diffuse water input that is then directed to 1.25 or 1.5" output connector. I don't recall my pump's flow rate, but it puts out a real gusher if the input was sitting just underwater for testing; a gusher that would allow you to empty a pond in a few minutes if the water was just thrown a foot outside the pond. However, my gardening water storage pond' pump is actually connected to ~50' of essentially 1" pipe and then on to a long garden hose. all this resistance drops the actual flow to a gentle hose stream that would not be effective with even a small sprinkler. My solution was to add a medium in line (pipe or hose connectors on both ends) transfer pump. I am now using a small 1/4 HP one and before was using a 1/2 HP one that failed (not too surprising since it came from Harbor Freight). The transfer pump is connected where the garden hose begins. It dramatically increases flow although still not a blast out of the hose or anything, but it makes the hose reasonably useful.

    On to um fertilizer; I very much doubt that you could eventually use drip line, at least not the ones with fittings. I used drip line many years ago on city water and found that the drippers clogged up. Good luck with all the extra crud! But you certainly could move one or more hoses around or connect them to sprinklers. You certainly wouldn't want to use sprinklers with fruits and veggies, but I suspect that direct to ground hose watering would be OK. However, you should probably check with the Vegetable Forum for current thinking on that.

  • 10 years ago

    There could be issues with Salmonella. I've heard that you need to be careful around ducks because of the risk of Salmonella so that washing hands thoroughly is very important. That suggests that water from duck ponds wouldn't be good for use on vegetables. But I've also heard that chickens are a higher risk than ducks. For me I wouldn't use it directly on anything you want to eat. Better to use it on ornamentals to be on the safe side.

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