Ok, I'm making the plunge, now looking for suggestions from the pond people

I have a spot in my courtyard where I cannot seem to get the ground cover to grow (been struggling with it for four years and I'm tired of it) so I have decided to put a 133gal pond there. It is one of the pre-formed ponds, and i will line the outside with stones, and under the ledge I plan to put cinder blocks to support it. I already have two koi who can go in it as well as a place and I am thinking of putting a catfish in it. Any other suggestions from any of the pond folks?

when i buy a house i will be adding a pond. i hope this is sooner than later.

good luck on your pond! keep us posted and share some pics!

Be careful with catfish. I caught some tadpole sized baby channel cats and put them in my parents pond... dummies jumped out! But in a short time they were already 3 inches!

OK just a suggestion. First I have heard that the preformed things are terrible to work with. We dug the hole by hand and used the black pond liner. Secondly we have a 350g pond and have three Koi in it and they get very big for our pond . You will never have enough room for two in 133g. once they grow to 1-2' or more. Go the extra mile and dig a bigger pond and use the black liner you'll be much happier in the long run and so will your fish. We have Koi, fancy goldfish, fancy guppies, platys and I just added two little Angel fish to it. I had a regular pleco in it for three years and he grew to be 19" in just that short time. Unfortunately he just died this spring. Also you will want to have at least one shelf area underwater for a bog end. This helps with filtration. I keep loads of hornwort in my pond and they get dirty with silt that the filter doesn't get. You can also put a potted Lily on the shelf if it's big enough. We have two shelves in our pond. One on each end. Hope this helps some.

I agree on the pre fab pond liners hard to work with and small, we dug a pond a while back that was 30 feet long by 15 feet wide and 3 feet deep in the center, I have no idea how many gallons but we used a pond liner as well. all I put in there was walmart feeder goldfish and they got huge and spawned all the time.
I will see if I can find a pic.. good luck and have fun:)

Pics of pond and fish





butterfly Koi


White bulldog Butterfly Koi


Regular Koi

Thanks for the recommendations! The reason I was thinking of a preformed is because the only place I can put it (without dogs going into it) is in the court yard and it would be about 2-3 feet from the wall of the house and I have had trouble with just placing stakes into the ground right there. Do you think it would be safe to dig a pond that close to the house??

As you can see in my picture of our pond to the right is our back deck which we go out on and sit and have our morning coffee. It is only about 5' wide and then the pond is right off it so it is very close to the house and haven't had any problems. Plus the closer to the house it is it's easier to run your plug ins for the filters and such. We have an outdoor plug right there on the back of the house. Oh yes and I highly recommend under water light in the pond. They are beautiful at night. You can see what the fish are doing down there in the deep after sun set.

I agree with the others that a preforms pond is a pain in the butt. Also they are right about it being too small for more than a few small koi. My only concern about digging close to the house or anywhere really in the yard is hitting a utility line obviously. Other than that, I wouldn't worry. I've seen koi ponds inside sunrooms in a house.
Here's my 3600 gallon pond that I am currently redoing

heath, very nice looking pond.

thank you, yours is very nice too.

Thanks but now that I know more about them I wish we had dug it bigger.