How To Make A Container Pond - Stock Tank Pond - Solar Powered!

Hey folks, welcome to the Do-It-Yourself Dad channel. Today I'm out here by my favorite part of my yard. This is my koi pond, but we're actually going to be doing something up in the front yard. We're going to be building a container pond today to bring something like this up to the front, and it's something that you can do if you don't have room for a koi pond like this, and there's only a few things you need. So let me show you how we're going to get this whole thing done. Now the beautiful thing about a container pond is you can use just about anything that can hold water. We're going to be using this stock tank. We picked this thing up a while back. We're about a foot and a half deep, and something just to consider is the bigger you get your pond, the more water it's going to have in it, and it's actually going to make it easier to maintain with the more water that it contains. You're going to have less temperature swings from day to night and whatnot, especially if you're planning on having fish in it. You could even use something smaller like a wagon and line it. I've seen people do that, and I've seen people make things out of smaller pots like these, but this one we're going to do out of something big. Now coming back over here, we're going to be using this, and I'm actually going to get a couple more of these once this is all done, but this is a solar powered pump. This thing is really not powerful enough for this, so I'm going to actually get a couple more once this thing gets going, but you are going to need some form of water circulation so the water doesn't get stagnant. I've got a link for this and actually bigger solar pumps in the description below. The nice thing about the solar pumps is if you don't have wiring to where you're going, or say you want to do this in the middle of a counter or a tabletop outside, you don't have to worry about running that. So let's get the area prepped. I'm going to show you how we're going to do that. We're going to fill it with water, get the pump going, get some plants in it, and make ourselves a nice little water feature up in the front yard. Now there's a couple things to consider when you're deciding where you're going to put your container. You want it on a nice level area or an area that you can get level so the water isn't tipping to one side or the other, and you want an area that gets a fair amount of shade because the temperature is going to swing in this thing a lot, and the more sunlight it gets, the faster it's going to grow algae. So we have this thing in our front yard. It's directly beside a large tree, and then we've got another bush over here, so it does get a fair amount of shade. But the other thing to think about is that tree drops leaves, so we are going to have to deal with leaves getting in it. So if you're okay with that, that's fine. Otherwise, you're going to want to pick an area where it won't get leaves, maybe underneath an eave of a house. So we're going to get this area kind of cleared out. We're going to level the area, then we're going to move that into the area. Now as with most projects you're going to be doing, the most important part of this is the prep. You want to make sure the ground around your container pond is perfectly level. The wider or the larger your pond, the more pronounced it'll be if you're a little bit off. A little bit of off will result in an inch or two of water difference at either side of the pond, and you don't want that. So take your time, make sure the ground is leveled. You can see here I'm using a straight edge with a bubble level to make sure it's level. If you don't have that, there's actually apps on your phone that you can download. You can put the edge of your phone on the edge of your container and make sure it's perfectly level. So now with this level, let's move on to the next step. All right, so we've got our container pond about half full of water now, and we're going to stop because now's the time when we get to do the fun part, and that is adding plants. Now you can go down to your local nursery or pond supply store and buy plants, but I wouldn't do that. Usually if you have a neighbor or a friend that has a pond, they are constantly having to pull stuff out of their pond, and that's actually the hidden agenda behind me building this, is I need a place to put my extra plants, especially my duckweed. My fish eat duckweed like crazy, and I like to feed it to them, but they'll actually eat all of it. So I'm going to grow it in here and move it into the pond when they're hungry and they want to eat some. But check on Craigslist, check on Facebook Marketplace. Chances are there's somebody in your area that's got a koi pond that would be happy to give you some free stuff. So let's get some plants in here. We're going to put some lily pads and some duckweed and a few other neat things in here. So let's get started on that. All right, so I'm going to start out by showing you how I plant lily pads. So if you get them from a friend or a neighbor or somebody off Craigslist, you're going get something like this. And this is the root piece, and you can see here they actually come apart. And this is a very small one, and there's one little guy there. We're going to plant this big one because there's a lot of stuff coming off of it. So what we're going to do is we're going to plant it in these buckets. Now you can go down to your dollar store. I got this from the Dollar Tree. You do not need something with drainage on the bottom in a pond application. You actually want something without drainage on the bottom. So we are going to use this to put it in, and they usually root themselves in clay soil. The easiest way to get that is, right at your Dollar Tree again, kitty litter. You want to get non-scented clay kitty litter. If you can get low dust, that's better because you're going to have to rinse it, but it doesn't really matter. You just want to make sure you get something that doesn't have additives in it. You don't want scents and all that garbage. You just want straight kitty litter. We are going to want to rinse it because it can get dusty. You can see the dust is probably coming off it right there. But the problem with it is that it'll also cloud up the water in your pond. So now we've got about half of our bag in there and the other half here cleaned out, and I've got a little bit of this pond plant fertilizer. You want to put it down in there. You don't need this, but it doesn't hurt. It can help a little bit with getting these things going. So if you do want to use that, I have a link for that in the description below, but it's not necessary. It's just helpful. So now to plant these. These usually grow off of one end. They tend to branch out in places, but we're going to take the end that has leaves already on it, and we're going to try to keep those leaves above the clay and all this stuff down in the clay. So we're going to kind of bury that one end in, hold those leaves up, and then we can dump the rest on top. Just kind of work that clay around, and you want to get good coverage in there. Make sure it's nice and level. And now another optional thing you can do, and I like to do this, is to put a layer of gravel on top of that. That helps hold all this down so you don't get the clay pieces all over the inside of your pond. But again, that's optional. You don't have to do that. And now it's time to add our first set of lily pads to their new home. When you add them in there, you want to add them real slow so you don't disturb the clay. Let the water kind of slowly get in there, and it'll still turn a little cloudy, and that's okay. And then once it's in there, those lily pads, if you have any, will float. And sometimes they're tangled, so you want to help them untangle themselves a little bit. If they're not all the way to the surface, that is fine. These things grow at an amazingly fast rate. If you put them in here like this two, three days, and they'll be up at the surface. So let's put a few more in. So now we've got three of our pots in. I'm probably going to put two more in here as time goes on, but these are the lily pads that I've got to work with right now. And then you can see this stuff, the green stuff in here. This is actually duckweed. I'm going to be moving some of this stuff into here to fill up the rest of this thing. And the duckweed will actually help cover the surface so we don't get a big algae bloom going on in here. It's kind of almost like sunscreen. But right now, let's throw the hose in. We're going to bring the water level up a little bit higher, and then we'll start working on getting some water circulation with that pump in here. All right, so now it's time to deal with the pump. Now, these little pumps, this thing honestly is not going to do the job for this thing, but it'll suit for the time being. And it does have the nice little solar panel feature, which is pretty cool. So that means I don't run a wire over to this thing yet. I'll probably just run a couple of these. But the problem with these is because they don't pull a lot of water, it doesn't have enough suction power to pull anything through that if anything gets in the way of that. So we're going to build a little filter box here, which is a good idea no matter what kind of pump you're going to do. Now, the first thing to do is go into your kitchen and steal one of these, distract everybody else so you don't get yelled at for taking the Ziploc containers. And we are going to pop the lid off, get our handy drill, and we're going to get a drill bit on this thing that's going to be about the diameter of the little hose here. So you're going to want to drill a hole right smack in the middle of your lid that you can then feed the hose through. So we've got our hose going right through there. We can have our little spray head and you can use all the different, they've got a bunch of different kinds of spray heads on these, but so we've got that. And now what we're going to do is we're going to switch drill bits to a much smaller drill bit and we're going to start drilling holes all the way around this thing to let water into it. So that's a good start to our filter box. Now let's get some gravel. We're going to fill this thing with gravel and we're actually going to put the pump right in the middle of all the gravel, just like so. Once you get that figured out, we're going to add in a little bit more gravel around it. Make a little hole in the middle for your pump and we're going to seal the whole thing up. Our solar panel is actually in the shade right now and the fountain is already doing a pretty cool little job there. So we'll see what's happening tomorrow once we get some good sun on this thing. So give it a week or two. These lily pads are going to fill in great. We're going to have lily flowers in the pond. It's going to look amazing. So if this video helped you out at all, be sure to hit that subscribe button because we've got a lot more awesome stuff coming your way. And go down below, leave me a comment, let me know what kind of videos you'd like to see on the channel. And of course, thanks for watching!