It's supposed to get down to
20 tomorrow night! Frozen trick or
treaters! The teenagers think there
will be lots of leftover candy that will
need eating.
For winter ponding I set up a couple pondsills.
Here are some instructions for newbies.
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What you need is a really big jar. The kind you can buy on the bottom shelf at
the supermarket filled with pickles
or one of those warehouse food store chains. As long as it will fit on your
kitchen windowsill or
office windowsill - the idea is to get some winter sun. I added one of those
decorative shelves so
it is flush with the my narrow kitchen windowsill and gave myself more room.
So you've got your giant pickle jar, eat all the pickles.
Clean jar.
Fill the bottom with aquarium gravel to a depth of about one to two inches
(use the polished rock kind, the dyed stuff can be hard on some critters).
Add a couple pretty marbles, agates, glass florist stones or aquarium toys.
Right now I have a sunken and haunted Chinese junk in mine - Osama the leech
lives
in the Chinese junk from time to time.
Net up several strands of underwater plants and put in.
I use anacharis from my pond.
(You can buy underwater plants at a good pet store that sells
lots of fish.)
Add a pinch of pond slime.
Add pondwater.
Find a bunch of baby snails and drop in.
Net up two baby fish from the pond, the smaller the better.
Top with duckweed.
If you add an aquatic frog (pet store), put a piece of netting over the top,
they can pop out in pursuit of a freeze dried bloodworm. (I have found with a
top that curves in you don't have to worry about them escaping.)
Set in the window and feed very, very sparingly. Two flakes of goldfish food or
two koi kibbles ground up for the little fish. A couple freeze dried bloodworms
for aquatic frogs. Watch for fish eating the frog's bloodworms - if this
happens remove fish to their own pondsill.
Do water changes from time to time -
Use a turkey baster to suck up water and goop from the bottom and feed your
plants with it.
Or just dump everybody in a big mixing bowl, swish the gravel in a strainer,
refill
pondsill with fresh pond water and move the residents back in when the water
temps feel the same.
Do not use that turkey baster for Thanksgiving dinner, or at least don't tell
your
mother-in-law what you use it for in tending the pondsill.
The pondsill should balance itself and the larger the glass jar the better.




k30a