my fiance and i were just looking at houses and one had an inground pool in the back yard. he said it as a joke, but i ran with it...how much time, effort, and cash would it really take to turn the pool into a pond? the deep end was like 6 or7 feet the shallow 2 or 3.

I have never (not yet anyway ) converted a pool into a pond, but I do have a pool in the back yard, and there are a few things to consider -
First of all, the pool equipment is most likely not good enough for filtering your converted pond later on. The pool filter in my house is a joke, when I imagine the pool would be a pond filled with fish.
Also, the pool has chlorine and some other chemicals in it, and its everywhere, the pump, the filter, the skimmer, everywhere. So, I can imagine its quite a task to get rid of the chlorine in the water.
I am not sure, if the paint the pool has been painted in is fish safe. So you might wonna look into that, and maybe repaint the whole thing, just to be on the safe side.

We were joking around a few times now about how the pool would look with some fish in instead, and I cant even imagine how many fish would fit into a 12.000 gl pond! Actually, I CAN imagine that, but thats another point entirely!

Yes, all the chlorine residue is something to consider--how would you get rid of all of it? 100 gallons of aqua plus??

My cousin has a disaster with his koi pond several years ago--it is about 4' from his swimming pool--he went on a trip and had a neighbor watch things. The neighbor was adding water to the pool, got drunk and passed out, the pool water overflowed into the pond and killed all of the koi! It was so sad since he had quite a few huge and beautiful koi (and quite valuable). He started over and now his koi are spectacular.


I know that koi ponds require a powerful filter and something add air to the water, my cousin has a great waterfall.

I am not sure how it would differ from what my dad keeps in his pool. A few years ago he converted his pool into a fishing hole. He keeps catfish and trout. He drained it, flushed it and added the fish. Those fish have been going strong for a few years. I found it strange but the grand-kids love it. Trust me, I know he didn't invest too much money. But then again, koi being ornamental fish it could be a whole different story.

There are special chemicals you can use to get most of the chlorine out of the system. Then what you would have to do is change out the pool's filter for one designed for fish bearing ponds. Next step would be to add pond liner, fit the bottom drain through the pond liner (not sure how to do this, I've never built a pond), and hook everything up. The pond liner helps prevent the old chlorine residue from getting to your fish. If you really wanted to do it, I'd suggest adding a raised "wall"/bench thing all around the pool. This way you can sit and look at the fish, and you won't get run-off in your pond. You'd cement this, fit the pond liner, cement/gluel/whatever the pond liner up and *over* this, place the top flagstone type thingies, fill with water, cycle (three month operation I've heard! ack!) and then you're good to go.

Lol.. i was allways planing to do some thing like
that but i live in a condo so i can't have that kinda pond
yet! lol well im looking for ward to
be liveing in a house and makeing a big pond for my little goldfish

Black Oranda, imagine you could convert the community pool of your apartment building into a pond, and all the other residents come down the next morning to find fish where they used to swim the day before. I wonder how happy they are gonna be?!

Does the pool have bottom drains and what size diameter is the piping?
I think the chlorine is the least of your worries since you can easily remedy that but a pool filter will not even come close too providing the proper filtration a pond needs. You will also need too reseal it with something that is fish safe. In your situation you would probably be looking at some type of direct suction (meaning that the pump comes before the filter) without doing major modifications. With smaller diameter piping stay away from gravity fed systems even though they are better, they are not suited too anything less than 4" diameter pipe. You could also probably put your pool filter at the end of the line as a polishing filter. I hoped that helped a little but if you search around you can find much better detailed info about conversions.

Rachugirl thats a great plan! lol
they would be mad at me ... o well