Building a Fish Pond: Putting the Liner In

The LINER is an important part of building a fish pond.  If you're doing a plastic type liner as we originally did, you may need a couple of people to help you keep the liner straight or heavy objects to help secure sides.

We used a 7mm black plastic for the pond in this process.. You can purchase it at your local Lowe's (which is where we got ours) or anywhere else that may carry it. **The Black plastic worked better for us, we used the Clear plastic once and the sun dry-rotted it really fast!!

Here is what we did ...

   First, roll out the plastic well past the length of your pond, it has to go down into the hole and still have enough remaining to cover the edges.  If you are planning to plant a flower garden surrounding your pond, then roll extra to assure you can cover that space as well (it will help keep grass and weeds from growing in as much).  Don't worry, if you have too much you can cut it when you are finished; but it won't be good if there isn't enough because you will have to start over (and that is wasting money).

  Once you have the size you need laid out, cover the hole; making sure that their is the same amount of space on each side (as close as possible).  Have something their that you can hold down sides, if needed!  When we were doing this stage the wind started blowing pretty hard and it kept trying to blow our plastic away (lol).  We used our big rocks to hold down the four corners, but allowing the plastic to hang down in the hole a little.

After you have everything in place, you are ready to start filling your pond!  Once you have begun filling your pond, you should try to keep the plastic as smooth as possible.  This can be difficult depending on the design of your pond!  Our's was designed with a step on one side, so we had to make sure it did not look bunched up in that area... it was a small challenge.

We have well water; therefore, we stopped about half way through this process because we hadn't had a good rain in a few weeks.  If we ran the water too long we could take the chance of starting to get a dingy water look ... we didn't want that.

When your pond is full, it is time for you to decide how you want the outer layer to look.

**Will you be planting flowers around the border?Filling with rocks? or Cutting around the border?


The first time we went with cutting around the border of the pond (as you see below).

If you decide to go this way.. As we did!  You will need something to secure the boarder of your pond.

We purchased a pack of what looked to be huge staples (lol) from Lowe's; and that is what we used to secure the plastic all the way around the pond.

I actually loved this look!!





Once, you have secured the liner (plastic) the way you have chosen; you have completed this step and your pond! :)

You can wait until this step is completed to add your fish or you can put them in once the pond is full of water.. it's up to you!!  Just make sure you leave them in their bag or whatever the pet store put them in, to allow your fish to be adapt to the the temp before releasing them into your pond.

*This precaution will hopefully prevent loosing any fish!!