Pond Leaks, Multi-Level Ponds and Pond Foam - Ask T.P.D. Show 23 

I built my first pond in 2005 and have two now. Both have been refined and reworked after I started watching your videos. Thank you Eric, for great tutorials. So far every leak the that has occurred in either of my ponds has been in the waterfall, stream flow or filter system.

I've had two leaks in my koi pond in nine years. The first leak happened after 6 years of running leak-free. I eventually found the leak by shutting off all of the filtration equipment until I was satisfied the leak was actually in the lower pond liner somewhere. To troubleshoot the problem from there, I simply lowered the water level an inch at a time and watched to see if the leak continued. I kept doing this until the leak stopped. Then I when around the pond at or about that water level until I finally found the tiny cut in the liner. The second leak was in the streambed connecting my upper and lower pond. I have a built in way of bypassing the streambed and so it became obvious the problem was there when I stopped the leak by bypassing the stream. Since the stream is only 3 feet wide, it was an easy decision to just replace the liner and while doing that... I quickly realized the bed of the stream under the liner had sunk enough to cause some of the water to run back up the stream under the liner. After renting a laser level, it was a simple matter of building the upper portion of the stream back up again to create the proper slope. Problem solved... but it must be said... troubleshooting a leak in your pond can be very difficult sometimes.

Hi Eric! I set up my 2000 gallon pond nearly a month ago and I have an Oase 4000 gph pump, waterfall and an Oase filtration system. I initially placed 16 ounces of TopFin Pond Bacteria Boost. And within a day or so, I noticed clumps of foam on the surface of the pond. A week later, I added 10 feeder goldfish and noticed that the foam continues. The feeder goldfish are all thriving. 2 weeks later I added 18 ounces of Microbe-liftPL. (smelly stuff) I've never seen any signs of ammonia when I test. PH was around 7.5 for the past few weeks, but today it's at 9.0! KH is 2 drops before turning from yellow to blue. A friend suggested adding ammonium Chloride to the pond to establish the water system. This will surely kill the feeder goldfish, but he said it will address the foam issue and establish the water system to make it healthy to eventually introduce koi. Thoughts on this? Your opinion is appreciated!

Yes, I did have a leak! It was in the stream, and the bank just wasn't vertical enough, so I fixed it by adding some soil under the liner to make it more upright.

You asked about leaks, well, I've got them. Ponds are two waterfalls above ground that go into plastic tubs. An overflow on one goes to a stream that goes to a large pond. That one is about 20 x 5 feet oval shaped. Another stream leads to another ponds that's about 8 x 6 feet oval. A pump in it delivers water to one of the waterfall tubs. A pump on the waterfalls drives them. There is an underground pipe connecting the two tubs so it isn't terrible keeping them balanced using some valves on the intakes. The pond pump pushes water about 70 feet with a rise of about 5 feet. The streams and ponds use a rubber liner. The smaller pond had a leak. Just couldn't keep it filled. I pumped it dry. Tucked a hose behind the liner and waited for water to start coming in through the leaks. Basically the rubber is rotted from sunlight, I guess. There are at least two places. Trying to patch them now and waiting tonight to see what the level is in the morning. Since it was time for a cleanout I drained the larger pond. Guess what? I can see rotted sections on it. Sigh. All of this is 12-14 years old. The waterfalls went in first then the digging of the ponds by hand took a year or so. As for sediment, the tub pond that gets the water from the ponds collects a lot of dirt. It gets it from all the others.

Eric your show is awesome, it reminds me of church when i was a kid and the priest would always talk about what you needed to hear. you must be reading my mind

One spring I decided to start up the filtration system to early, so it froze overnight pumping about half of the pondwater onto the lawn. When the suspended ice-sheet then melted it crashed down and tore 27 individual holes in the PVC liner. I had to relocate the koi to the pool and drain the pond to fix the holes. I have rebuilt the entire pond since then.

Only had a leak once in my former 7 ponds so far. It was about 4 or 5 inches down from the water level and was caused by a queen palm root. We dug back behind the liner and chopped the roots on the pond side back ( knowing that was only a temporary fix) and patched the liner. We knew we'd have to remove the tree eventually tho. In the mean time we sold that home. Our bad!

Wow... all of Eric's experiences with upper and lower pond designs are dead on with my setup as well. I have an upper pond that feeds a lower pond via a streambed and the upper pond always has more sediment. The upper pond has plants that help with the nitrates, but there are no plants in the bottom pond for the koi to tear up, so I get the best of both worlds there. But the best reason for having two ponds working together (other than it just being beautiful) is the fact that we have a built in quarantine pond at the top. If I need to quarantine some fish because they're new or because somebody needs some treatment, I can run the two ponds separately. The neat thing is... it's designed to look like both ponds are connected even if they're not and running in a temporary quarantine configuration. There's a waterfall in the top pond and a stream connecting the top to the bottom, but when the upper pond is running in quarantine mode... the waterfall is still running, but there's a bottom drain in the upper pond that allows me to cycle the water separately. And then the lower pond is filtered and with a couple of valves I can bypass the upper pond and go straight into the stream back to the lower pond. So essentially, with the waterfall and the stream running, the two ponds look exactly the same if they're running separately or together. And Eric was right about putting goldfish in the top pond with the false hope of keeping them separate from the koi in the bottom pond. That never works. Inevitably you will have gold fish in with your koi and believe it or not... there will be koi in the upper pond with your goldfish. That's because both the goldfish and the koi will spawn and some of the eggs from the goldfish will make their way down the stream and into the lower pond. And the tiny koi fry will get sucked into the bottom drain and somehow make it through all of the filters and over the waterfall to the upper pond. It's incredible to think this can happen... but then again... once you realize the average female koi can have hundreds of thousands of eggs in a single spawning... it's no wonder some of those eggs and fry will make it through the filters and back into the ponds again.

I built a pond back in 1995, had many years enjoyment from it. Multi layered (2) with a water fall. Basically the construction was Imagine a side walk for 10 feet x 3 feet wide, then transforms into an 8 foot circle, out of the 8 foot circle falls into the second level which is another 3 food wide side walk transforming into an ending eight foot circle. Four inch thick foundation with rebar every 14 inches. Looks kind of like an hour glass would be closest example I could give I guess with an additional "stem" where my filter is housed at the high end. Sides of which are limestone rocks laid around the edges of the "sidewalks" so to speak, I trowed mortar on insides of the rock for smoother surface and trying to help "seal" it all. Used drylock UGL paint 5 gallons of it over the mortar coated walls. Had a pump on lower end driving water back up to upper end thru a 2 x 2 x 4foot poured in place concrete filter. The top half of my pond has been shut down for about 8 years now. The "sidewalks" settled and the sides of the rocks have cracked somewhat. Worked great until things started settling. I continue to use my bottom part (without the pump I may add) hasn't run in years, most likely locked up useless by now I presume. Lately cleaned out top half, overcome with some type of umbrella plant. Pulled all that up with a square nosed shovel and found leak from the bottom half going back into top half which has had no water in it, just this massive umbrella plant growth. We had 30 inches (seemed like) rain May 2015 and I just thought that water was in upper level from the rain. But it has remained moist in there for past 2 months of no rain (central texas). So when I scrapped out all the Umb plants I'm gathering a bit of water in there. Point is I want to get around to redoing it all, but have tried troweling more mortar on the cracked joints to no avail. Maybe I should have used the wire mesh as for stucco when I originally troweled the mortar on? I suspect it'd be worn out by now as well. My solution I feel that I'm down to now is install a liner over the existing sides, and adding another row of rocks (Austin limestone) over the liner as an edging. Mortared in place of course. I need to figure out how to treat the one fall area with the liner for the first level. The real challenge is going to be the bottom level, I have a "concrete poured walk-over" across a 3 foot section and laying on top of the original sides of the limestone walls and the rocks run right up to the edges of the "bridge". To ever install a liner down there, (and this part really leaks into the outlying dirt (although it is built into the ground) (but can tell it's leaking from the grass and weed growth around it), anyway to install a liner on that end, I will have to jack hammer out the concrete bridge to be able to install the liner. Right now, only fix on top level is a liner I feel and then can drain, clean out the bottom part and a year or so from now, try to attack the bottom level. I will add, I have WAY more sediment in the lower end than the top end (I've never cleaned bottoms with any suction things). I've had plants in the bottom and top ends and fish in both as well. I have about 14 inches or more of settlement in the bottom end now which has been stagnant basically for at least 8 years. Of course I did use to drain the 2 x 2 x 4 concrete filter every couple of weeks and the 8 years of non operation in the top part may well be 10 years. In conclusion, which has really nothing to do with the above statement, but everything to do with it, I can actually imagine and understand how OIL was created over thousand of years of this process. It is now obvious to me that at one time, the earth was completely covered with water. And who nows how many thousands of years it took for all this settlement to be layered on, layer after layer. When you clean that muck out and the smell is rotten? You can see the truth. I have 14 plus inches of settlement in 20 years in that bottom part. I had two big gold fish left, one died last week. 100 plus temps for last 2 weeks. Very little water on top of the "muck". I'll shut up now, as I don't know exactly what I'm talking about, but most folks could get the drift. If anyone has any suggestions, I certainly appreciate and be willing to share my experiences!

Thank you, We've just come into spring and my goldfish are spawning. That is why there is foam. Kim from New Zealand

Great info because people always ask on the garden pond forum is it a leak or evaporation and thought this would help a lot of them and the second thing they seem to not know about is water test kits .Most don't even know you should test water .Moles and had to replace liner .I have had foam in the pond but as long as it does not smell or look green or yellow I know it is coming from a floating ball or my floating duck decoy getting near the waterfall area .And of course the fish .

I also had a leak right at the bottom of my pond. I think a rock fell and the pointy part pierced straight through. The pond drained down to about the level of the water table. Whenever rain fell and the water table rose the muddy water would undermine the liner and enter the pond. I caught all the fish and slipped the entire liner out of the pond (since I could not possibly drain the pond -water from the soil would just rush in) I`m gonna patch it in the morning and use the opportunity to inspect it. I`m just gonna float it over the water, fix the edges a bit and as its filling make sure it pushes into all the corners where it needs to fit

One thought about the different levels of foam in two different ponds. I don't know if we heard the questioner say if their two ponds were connected or not, but I do have some experience with this type of thing happening with my two ponds and because they are connected to each other. As I said below, I have a waterfall in my upper pond, which eventually overflows into a streambed that then rushes down to a dedicated koi pond at the bottom. The lower pond will sometimes have more foam than the upper pond and I eventually did come to the conclusion that the reason for this was the streambed feeding the lower pond. Because the water traveling down the stream is tumbling over rocks as it makes its way down to the lower pond, it picks up more oxygen (which in fact is the whole point of having my stream in the first place.) But having that extra oxygen gathered up in the stream allows those dissolved organic carbons molecules (DOC) to attach itself to the oxygen like a built in fractionator. Thus I have more foam traveling around on the surface of the lower pond. If I bypass the streambed, there is less foam in the lower pond, or at least about the same amount of foam that I see in the upper pond.

So I know I have a leak in my liner. It started leaking right after I had the pond cleaned by the only pond company in our area but they deny responsibilty and want to charge us to fix the leak, so I am on my own to figure this out. Please help! The pond is about 4 feet from the lowest point to the top, about 1200 gallons. The water continues to empty regardless of how much I put in until it gets to a certain point. I believe the leak is about a foot or so from the top of the pond. It happens overnight so I believe it is a fairly large leak. I do notice that when it rains it doesn't leak as fast though. This leak has caused me to have to turn off one of the intakes for the pump b/c the water no longer reaches the level for the skimmer box. So please please tell me what can I do?

Awesome, great advise Eric, will report back on my findings. Now for my other 50 questions...

About halfway through I speed up the volume... hoping to get to some point where you actually repair a leak. Can't find it. So to make this simple, DO YOU have a video on exactly how to best repair a plastic pre formed pond? I'll just post my question here. I KNOW where the leak is and why. IN this case, I had a home made cement basin and waterfall just above one edge of the pond. A very large tree limb came down and landed right on the cement work pushing that edge of the plastic rigid pond liner in and forming two hairline cracks oh, about half way down. Patched it once, lasted for several years. Patch gave out, (it happens to be in a bad place, right where the pond has two bends. I had a heck of a time even getting the patch on.) Then I found a product, kinda like caulk but safe to use with fish and can cure under water. Got some, tried it, and that seemed to work for several weeks. Suddenly the once hairline cracks, turned into wider gashes, I can actually see the dirt under the pond and it drained down to that point, suddenly and within a few hours. Tried to find a liner in the exact same shape thinking I'd just replace the thing (this is small, 60 gal, sort of a bean shape thing. Can't find one.) Then I had a thought. What if I remove this rigid liner, did a better job, maybe find some heavy duty patch stuff and patch inside AND outside. THEN (OR, might not need to patch) what are your thoughts. Remove this rigid shell, put in a pond liner, might not need to be very thick. Then replace the shell. Wouldn't that work as well, or better than trying to patch this pair of cracks?

I did have a lot of water loss I thought ,and I tried turning off all systems to see., and while off I. Set up a bucket test as well. That is fill up a bucket half way or so and mark water line. Theoretically Should have the same amount of vertical loss in bucket as pond( with everything shut down). That test passed ,both had same amount of evaporation.Turn system on and had a significant amount of water loss,,I found the leak at the spillover in waterfall. ( the cause was two fold in my option ) liner was prob cut to short which I now know better thanks to your show,and 2nd penny wart had grown up water fall and got behind transition of liner and waterfall box.

Thanks for sharing. Always get interesting visual ideas from your clips..

Great insight about night time evaporation. Had not thought that though. Always just thought it looked cool..lol

I currently have 2 leaks in my pond. Both caused by me over the winter. They are located at the very edge of the top of the pond. It was an excruciatingly cold winter here in Michigan this year and I could not maintain a sufficient opening in my pond (we're talking 3-4" of ice, some spots had up to 6"). My aerator and heater just couldn't keep an opening. Boiling water wouldn't even touch it. In my panic, because I work out of town every week and only have a couple days to tend to the issue, I purchased a 500,000 BTU propane torch. Boy that thing worked wonders at -20 windchill. I was on the right track to maintaining an opening until I noticed what I had done.. With as much propelled heat as that torch put out, it created heat pockets under the rock around the edge of the pond and melted a few small holes in the liner. Damn it. It is spring now and the holes are still there. I don't believe much water leaks through because of how high up the holes are so at this point, I am leaving it alone. I believe the only way to fix the holes is to COMPLETELY disassemble the entire pond, remove the liner and underlayment and rebuild the entire thing again. Just not feasible. So there you go, there's my unfortunate pond story. I should mention however, all the fish made it through the winter and are doing well.

One should not skimp on the waterfall liner. I put a small water fall in and thought that a 10 x 5 liner would suffice. I found the water level dropping in the pond, and upon investigation, found I was losing water at the sides of the cascade. If I had used a larger liner, I would have been able to set the cascade rocks completely inside the liners edges, instead of building mounds on the sides to set the rocks on,... lesson learned

Eric ThePondDigger , On the topic of pond leaks, how much water loss can be attributed to aquatic plants, given my pond has abt ~30% of the surface area covered? I've got a couple large papyrus plants, lillies, marginal japanese acorus, and some hyacinth. Thoughts? -Al

I have a upper pond but it has a bottom drain too it does collect a little bit more

Hi I just made a concrete pond how do I seal it to make sure is not leaking someone says rubber roof paint thank you

Hello from Denver Co. We have had a 10,000 gal.pond for about 12 years.we live about three blocks from a creek.My first question is =do you have any suggestions on how to keep rats from making my pond home.Yes, i do have bird feeders.We have once again taken care of the rat problem but now we need to find the holes in the liner that the rats chewed through the streams we have three.HELP! I wouldn't change a thing about my pond,I think it is Beautiful except it attracts rats WHY

OMG yes cause dog toe nails, no under layment, and no rocks on the bottom. I had to drain the pond which was a major under taking because the plant life had made a root ball approx. 6x6 by 1 foot thick. hacked up the root ball in to manageable size plantings. then looked for dent ts in the liner and water beads in the dents, Did the repair with repair tape. Will be replacing the liner next year with the addition of under layment. And a way to clime out.

Had a small leak at the head of our waterfall. Raised the sides on the liner and it stopped. Classic example of cutting the liner to small. #asktheponddigger Is it possible to do a bog waterfall filter? Seems from reading that bog filters are some of the best type. You get beautiful plants and excellent water filtration. Also seems less expensive then some of the waterfall filters out there. Also how often do you have to clean a bog filter?

Hello I have a 2 ft pond covered with liner and rocks , the water dropped around 5-6 in and it stopped , so we have a leak Any suggestions to find and fix the leak Because of rocks with cement cover outside the liner so it is hard to remove the rocks We are thinking about caulking and sealing , is it going to work? and what is the best product out there we can use to fix the problem Greatly appreciate

I had a leak in the pond, but was told that is disgusting and I should use the toilet

Ok so I'm rather sure I have a Leak I am seeing 2 inch drop in the pond during 16 hour period. It even down poured last night and I still had a good drop in later level. This issue started after I got in and cleaned the pond. My question how do I find the leak spot and how do I patch it.

#asktheponddigger what is the best koi food u use and how much would u feed your koi and how much

well?

did i miss it