new pond questions
 

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wrote:
Hello,

I have a relatively new (1 week) pond/water garden that I've got up and
running. It's basically an above ground 3x3x2 box lined with pond
linter. One corner has a shelf with gravel and rocks and a fountain
that spills water out over the rocks. So far we have 3 goldfish and a
variety of plants in there. We have 4 floating plants (watter lettuce
types), 5 submerged plants (anacharis and related) and 4 marginal
plants up on the shelf (2 dwarf lillies and 2 grass type plants I can't
recall what they are). I have a small water lilly on the way as well.

Filter wise, we have one of those submersible filter boxes (2 different
mesh pads and bio-balls) with a pump inside it. We have around 120
gallons and the filter moves about 200 gallons an hour, and with
something this small I hope the simple filter is adequate.

Everything is up and running and quite nicely, but I have a few
questions about the setup...

1) Our filter has pads and bio-balls, but should I put in any
biological starter or anything, or should it be ok?

2) I didn't do a good enough job (apparently) of washing the pea gravel
and stones before putting them in, so our water has been pretty cloudy
(all dirt and sand, not algae). Is there anything I can do about this
or just wait it out and eventually the filter will get it? I was
thinking that maybe some of the accu-clear would help to get the sand
and dirt out, but I'm not sure.

3) Our marginal plants are a few inches deep on a small shelf. For the
time being, to keep them alive until we figure out what to do with
them, we put some soil in landscape fabric and made a little bag over
the root ball tied up with string. I assume this won't work long term,
but I'm unsure wha to do with them. Most websites seem to suggest using
large pots for the marginals, but our shelf is only 4" underwater and
isn't really that large, so we couldn't fit an 8" pot in there. I've
also read some suggestions to just embed them in the pea gravel and
they'll be fine. Any advice on what to do with them?

A picture can be seen at
http://www.math.ohio-state.edu/~ccunning/garden.jpg to get an idea of
where the marginals are.