Fish pond advice

[Martin Owen]

I have a small (1.5m x 3m) built up (bottom is ground level) pond in my garden.

I relined it nearly 3 years ago with a proper, life time guaranteed 0.75mm Butly Rubber liner.
The construction of the pond is about a 3" sand bed, covered with a hessian backed carpet (carpet side up) the liner is then on top of the carpet.
The corners were all protected with sand and carpet.
When i fitted the liner i did it whist filling the pond so not to stretch the liner, once the pond was full of water i then fixed the liner in place. For extra protection another piece of liner was placed on the bottom before a thin layer of gravel.

Now my problem is i now have to top up the pond (about 6 - 10") every 3 or 4 weeks, is this normal, do i have a leak somewhere or is it just evaporating?

The filter is external and there are no leaks to or from it.

[Rod]

I had a similar thing a couple of years ago and I eventually tracked it down to a small hole in the liner. It would appear that a heron or something similar had popped a hole in the liner.
I bought a fibreglass pond off of Ebay and had no problems since.

[RonProwse]

Having to top it off is not a bad thing asssuming your not on a water meter, at least your doing the partial water changes in an indirect way.

I also have an external filter that no and again looses a bit of water somtimes its hard to find the leak/overflow.

R