The Pond Owner's Hub
PondCo
Straight answers for building, maintaining, and fixing backyard ponds and water gardens — real sizing math, seasonal checklists, and gear advice with the criteria spelled out and the sales pitch left off.
Browse the guides · Visit the Gear Hub
Start where you are
Build a Pond
Planning, digging, lining, plumbing, and stocking — the complete first build, in order.
Maintain It
Feeding, water quality, seasonal care, and the month-by-month winter routine that keeps fish alive.
Fix a Problem
Green water? String algae? Start with an honest ranking of every fix — from free ones to last resorts.
The Pond Gear Hub
Buying criteria for the six purchases that decide whether a pond works — what to look for, what to avoid, and why the numbers on the box mislead. Product picks are labelled as advertising where they appear; the criteria come first either way.
Pond Pumps · Pond Liners & Underlayment · Pond Filter Systems · UV Clarifiers & Sterilizers · Pond Skimmers · Pond Aeration Kits & Aerators
Latest guides
Start Here · Build a Pond
How to Build a Backyard Pond: A Beginner's Complete Guide
Plan, dig, line, plumb, and stock your first backyard pond — with the sizing math, shelf depths, and cycling steps most guides skip.
Fix a Problem
Pond Algae Control: Every Method, Ranked Honestly
Green water, string algae, or surface film? Identify your algae first, then work the honest ranking — from free nutrient control to last-resort algaecides.
Gear & Math
How to Size a Pond Pump (With the Math)
Pond volume, turnover rate, and head height — the three numbers that decide your pump, with worked examples and the running-cost formula.
Maintain It
Koi Pond Basics: Stocking, Feeding, and Winter Care
Space, stocking rates, temperature-based feeding, water-quality targets, and winter care — the fundamentals that keep koi healthy for decades.
Gear & Decisions
Pond Liners vs Preformed Shells: Which Should You Buy?
EPDM, PVC, and RPE liners compared with rigid preformed shells — flexibility, lifespan, installation traps, and a straight decision guide.
Maintain It · Seasonal
Winterizing Your Pond: A Month-by-Month Checklist
September to March: feeding cut-offs, leaf nets, pump and de-icer decisions, ice holes, and the spring restart — a month-by-month pond winterizing checklist.
Our books on Amazon
The PondCo team's own pond-care books — the handbook in Kindle and paperback, plus the logbook for keeping records. Full details on the Books page.
The Pond Care Handbook
Kindle eBook
The complete backyard pond and water-garden handbook — building, stocking, seasonal care, and fixing problems, in one place.
The Pond Care Handbook
Paperback
The same complete handbook in print — the copy that lives by the pond, not on a phone screen.
The Pond Care Logbook
Paperback
A working logbook for pond keepers: water tests, treatments, livestock, and seasonal jobs, recorded season after season. Not the same book as the IngramSpark title "The Backyard Pond Log Book".
How PondCo works: every guide here is written from established pond-keeping practice, states its rules of thumb as rules of thumb, and corrects errors when readers flag them. We do not publish fake reviews, invented ratings, or "best product" lists for products we have not verified. Where affiliate links appear, they are marked as advertising — and they never change the criteria we publish.