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While I was visiting my brother a few weeks ago he showed me his Outdoor Fish Pond. I fell in love with it. He had two little goldfish living in his pond. The grand kids would enjoy caring for the fish so I wanted one for my backyard.

I started asking questions. How’d you do it? Where’d you buy the stuff? And how do you care for it? I didn’t want to have to run any electric wires, plus I’m all about free The solar energy.

You’ll need:

Solar Pump
20 gallon half whiskey barrel
Aquarium rocks
2 Large flat rocks for shelter
water

I found my solar pump on Amazon. I read the reviews and made my choice from there. I bought the Sunnytech® 1.2w Solar Power Pond Oxygenator Air Pump Oxygen Pool Fishpond Fish Tank Pet. Ty had fun testing the pump. When you use a solar pump it will only work when the sun is actually shining. This pump doesn’t store the energy.

For the Pond I found a 20 inch Half Whiskey Barrel. You need a container that doesn’t have a drainage hole in the bottom and this one doesn’t so it works perfect. It’s deep enough that the fish are protected from a raccoon at night.

I used Aquarium rocks for the bottom of my pond. Tyler and I took them out of the bag and rinsed them with water before we put them in the whiskey barrel.

My brother told me you need to make a place for the fish to have shelter, finding the right rocks was easy I have a collection of rocks in my yard. Sounds weird right? Even as I child I collected rocks so all I had to do was pick 2 flat rocks so I could make a little hideaway. Tyler cleaned them up. He was having such a good time, excited about the fish but not really understanding what we were doing.

I set up my two rocks so the fish can swim and hide underneath. Make sure they are sturdy and won’t fall over.

Fill it up with water.Set your pump where you want it in the water.

Now for the fun part, putting in the fish. Katie and Tyler went to our local pet shop so they could each pick out their own fish. We talked to the young lady and asked questions to make sure we bought the right type of fish to have in an outdoor small small like this. I described what I was planning and she showed us which fish would be a perfect fit. Katie picked the white goldfish with colored specks and named her/him Cutie Pie. Tyler picked the black and brown gold fish and named him/her Goldie.

We have had the pond up for about 3 weeks. I cleaned it out today because the water was getting pretty cloudy. If the pond is in sun you have to clean it more often. Mine is half and half so every 3 weeks should be about right for me. It was easy to do. I took it all apart, scrubbed the parts, and put it all back together again.

I love sitting outside and watching them swim around. The first thing the grand kids do when they come over is feed their fish. 🙂