Dear All,

I've just found this forum and I'm wondering if someone can help me?

We have a pond in our garden which we inherited from the previous people who owned the house. Anyway, it's always been a bit murkey - no blanked weed, but quite dark water. I've cleaned it out the last 2 autumns but it gets the same way again. Someone's told me if you keep cleaning it out, it will keep going green and you need to leave it for a bit.

Anyway, it's quite small - about 1.5m x 0.7m. We also inherited 3 goldfish and some toads. Anyway, every spring the toads lay their spawn, quite a lot of it, yet I never see any tadpoles. I wondered if they were being eaten by the fish so this year I fished some out and put it in a bowl next to the pond. Again, no tadpoles.

Anyway, I'm wondering what to do with the pond. I have no electricity to the garden so a pump is not practical. Also, it's a bit small for one, I think. So we've bought some oxygenating plants (not in a pot - the stuff that just sits in the water), some surface floating plants (which I keep buying and always die) and a pot of watercress and a marginal. I've also planted a large plant next to the pond to shield it from some sun.

Every year I buy water snails and freshwater mussels to keep it clean, but they die quite quickly. I last week bought some daphnia as well. Although tadpoles, snails, etc don't seem happy in there, the fish are very healthy, as are the toads. They're just not producing any new toads.

Anyway, I've gone on enough now. I'd like to let ecology take over - get the right plants, snails, daphnia, insects, etc, but I don't know where to start. My local aquatic centres aren't very helpful.

Any advice would be much appreciated. I live in north Kent (England) if anyone wants to recommend an aquatic centre...

Thanks in advance,

Neil

Some random thoughts ~

Smaller is always harder to balance than
larger.

You are right to clean it out every year.

Shade and temperature. May be too shaded for
lilies and too cold for the toad eggs to hatch.

The snails and mussels may not have enough
food to survive, also mussels like moving water.

kathy :-)
help move the band out of the basement
http://www.battleofthebands.com/batt...nds/theloshas/

The snails and mussels may not have enough
food to survive, also mussels like moving water.

I had two mussels that were put in last year.

On cleaning out the small pond this week, I found one of the shells wide
open.
When I lifted it from the water, the mussel just slid out of the shell.
I assume it had died, as it was no longer attatched ?

Funnily enough, that was the one nearest the return pipe.
The other one so far seems fine.

Peter

The cleaning of the pond should only be removing the mulm from the
bottom. The plants need some Muriate of potash used in gardens to
promote flower and fruit growth. Or sulfate of potash, both of which
get dissolved in water before adding a spoonful or two to the pond. The
plants will perk up if added each week. There are solar operated pumps
or use an extention cord to run the pump. Then you can add a biofilter
to keep the water clean . Good luck!

Yup, your mussel passed on.

I've done a bunch of research on mussels and I think our
garden ponds are too small and too warm for them. Some
like rivers and some like ponds. Some are so picky that
they won't reproduce without a certain kinf of fish for
their babies to parasite. We have the most diverse population
of mussels in the world. Something like 55 species to the
Old World's 12.
Unfortunately the zebra mussel is moving in and causing
havoc with native species. They can actually cover a native
mussel and cause it to starve to death.

kathy :-)

I'm in UK too, 100 miles north of you ...Beds.
First, decide what do you actually want to do - keep fish, or just have an
ornamental pond.
If you want to keep fish, you will need a filtration system and pump. Most
people don't have external electrics to the garden, so have to provide them.
One way is a (carefully) routed extension cable connected via an RCD to an
"outdoor" socket somewhere close to the pond. Pumps have quite long leads.

Pump/filtration system will not only clarify the water, but removes
particulate debris, and more importantly helps with oxygenating,
conditioning and circulating the water - this will help the fish enormously,
and may also help if you MUST have crustaceans (though why you want them,
Lord knows)

If you buy new, this will cost you close to £200 - pump and filter - but
it's a long-term investment, pumps last forever (mine's over 12 years old,
still going strong). You might try the local papers or Google for
second-hand - and, by the way, you don't need a BIG pump. Calculate the
volume of water in the pond, go for a pump flow-rate which will pass the
entire volume in 2 - 3 hours. NB you will have to do "trial and error" to
match the pump flow-rate to the filter output, i.e. need to adjust the
height of the filter system to get input/output balance. Too high, the
filter doesn't work properly, too low, the filter overflows, returnng
unfiltered water back to the pond.
DO clean the filters (and pump) quite often in the initial stages - once
you've got rid of the excess silt/mulm, the need for cleaning will drop
dramatically.
Apart from chemical imbalance (which will be rectified by the filter system,
over time) another possible reason why your floating plants don't survive is
that the fish may be eating the roots.
One last thing - it's a small pond - don't over-feed the fish. Only give
them small amounts, whatever they will eat in about 20 minutes. Any more,
all you are doing is adding to water pollution as the excess food decays.
Missing a day or two (even a week) doesn't hurt - a balanced pond grows
natural food. And - toadspawn / frogspawn is providing LIVE food, when the
tadpoles hatch. So is daphnia, but, daphnia need flowing water. Finally -
NOW is the feeding time - till October, in UK. Little or no food required
in winter/spring. The hotter the water, the more active the fish, hence
increase food gradually then taper off as autumn comes - the "20 minute"
rule.

Hope this helps! No doubt others will comment, too.
Sincerely, Len.

"hornmeister2000" wrote in
message ...

Dear All,

I've just found this forum and I'm wondering if someone can help me?

We have a pond in our garden which we inherited from the previous
people who owned the house. Anyway, it's always been a bit murkey - no
blanked weed, but quite dark water. I've cleaned it out the last 2
autumns but it gets the same way again. Someone's told me if you keep
cleaning it out, it will keep going green and you need to leave it for
a bit.

Anyway, it's quite small - about 1.5m x 0.7m. We also inherited 3
goldfish and some toads. Anyway, every spring the toads lay their
spawn, quite a lot of it, yet I never see any tadpoles. I wondered if
they were being eaten by the fish so this year I fished some out and
put it in a bowl next to the pond. Again, no tadpoles.

Anyway, I'm wondering what to do with the pond. I have no electricity
to the garden so a pump is not practical. Also, it's a bit small for
one, I think. So we've bought some oxygenating plants (not in a pot -
the stuff that just sits in the water), some surface floating plants
(which I keep buying and always die) and a pot of watercress and a
marginal. I've also planted a large plant next to the pond to shield it
from some sun.

Every year I buy water snails and freshwater mussels to keep it clean,
but they die quite quickly. I last week bought some daphnia as well.
Although tadpoles, snails, etc don't seem happy in there, the fish are
very healthy, as are the toads. They're just not producing any new
toads.

Anyway, I've gone on enough now. I'd like to let ecology take over -
get the right plants, snails, daphnia, insects, etc, but I don't know
where to start. My local aquatic centres aren't very helpful.

Any advice would be much appreciated. I live in north Kent (England) if
anyone wants to recommend an aquatic centre...

Thanks in advance,

Neil


--
hornmeister2000