Bottom drain installed on the second pond

Last weekend was full on, with the road trip on Saturday and Kangei club events on the Sunday. So tonight was my first chance for a few days to push on with my pond building.

I got togged up and wondered out to the polytunnel to install the bottom drain on the second vat that will become the female brood fish pond.

A word on using vats. I'd love to have built something more permanent,probably fibreglass tanks, but vats are far cheaper and quick to install and I am compromising on the look and robustness of the end result for the practical and economic benefits.

The vat is a Bestway 12ft diameter 1.2m deep vat that I will fill to around 1m water depth. I'm using one as a temporary pond on my patio that's holding my koi collection, and this one is being installed "properly" with bottom drain and so on. The Aquosis vat is built in a way that is more suited to koi - no surpises I guess, because it's a dedicated koi vat. But the Bestway vat is much cheaper and it's one of my compromises to enable me to balance cost between each part of the project.

The Oval 1 is still at 5 degrees despite the sub zero temperatures outside, which is a result and bodes well for the future.