Pool To Pond

HI everyone, I'm turning a 6,000g pool into a koi pond and I want to do plants with top cover with semI large leaves or plants on shelves as the pool/pond will be in full sun. What plants do you guys recommend and what can I use to keep the plants and koi separate but still give them a place to seek shelter and shade? I live in Florida so plants need to be very hardy. Also I want to possibly have a grass bottom but I don't want the roots to damage the liner of the pool what could I use to protect the liner? This won't be set up for another month or so not until we close on our house it will be used temporary to house my all my cichlids for a few weeks husband wants to do a full cleaning on the tank and removed an old built in filtration box and seal it up. Pool/pond will be fully cycled before I get the koi we have plenty of cycled media from 300g tank plus back up media. Pool/pond dimensions is 18'x48" filtration I'm not sure of yet that's the husbands project to figure out, lol. Hope you guys can help me out because I haven't had any planted tanks or a pond.

 

You can start with Dwarf Cattail any hardy water lily once garden season will start you can get those in your local store.. you won't be able to grow any type grass koi fish will dig them up all plants will have to be planted in pots..

Water Lily

• Zigi Zig
• Dec 8, 2017

Water Lily

• Zigi Zig
• Dec 8, 2017

All my plants are planted in pots..

 

What soil do you use in the pots? Love the pink water lillies. I have to have top cover because we have stupid sand cranes down here that are almost as tall as I am.

 

What soil do you use in the pots? Love the pink water lillies. I have to have top cover because we have stupid sand cranes down here that are almost as tall as I am.

I use organic garden soil with mixture of potting fertilizer for ponds ... not sure how your plants will do in pool since there is only one depth some plants should be only 1-2 feet depth from the top..example some water lily shouldn't be more than 3 feet depth. .

 

The pool is only 48" deep. I could always find some kind of shelf or table that would add extra shade

 

The pool is only 48" deep. I could always find some kind of shelf or table that would add extra shade

Make sure that your pool lining is fish safe. If you want complete coverage you could add some duckweed, frogbit, and waterlettuce. How do you plan to filter such a large « aquarium »

 

The extra strong side walls of this pool are constructed with Tritech, a 3 layer reinforced material with a polyester mesh core encased between two layers of high guage PVC material. This creates a total thickness of 0.40-0.80mm (16-32 gauge) depending on the size of the pool, that' the description on the website I'm getting the pool from. As for filtration that's all on my husband, we do have plenty of cycled media from our 300g cichlid tank as well as extra media. But how he' going to do it I have no idea. My husbands boss has a 30,000g pond and I'm sure he has extra equipment.