Hello I am Craig an office worker, 25 married and live in Gillingham, Kent in the South East UK. My wife and I have lived together for nearly fours years now and apart from completely gutting the house, we also got married in Mauritius and had our first baby (Kyle aged 22 Months) and then we also decided to build our first pond just to keep us busy.
I kept cold water fish as a child in a tank but always got rid of my carp when they out grew it. This time I was going to make sure that they would not outgrow their surroundings and build the best I could for our budget. So pretty much single handedly I set about constructing my own Koi pond using notes mainly from this site.

The pond is built on a six inch reinforced concrete base and is made up from medium density (18” x 9” x 4”) concrete blocks, rendered inside and out and was given a fibreglass finish. I made the pergola and filter lids and decked the pond edge myself. I also had to toddler proof the pond and put together some trellis so that children cannot get onto the pond edges. I flush my vortex once a week and clean the large brushes off, the wastewater is a useful liquid fertiliser for the grass and plants.