Changes to the Big Pond

I've never quite finished up my big pond project, and last week I decided to tackle it again. Up until now, the pond essentially has been in the shade almost all day. That encouraged lots of moss and fungus to grow on the bridge, weakening the two long logs that supported the bridge walkway. Those logs were two eucalyptus trees, a wood I have since learned was not a good choice for the job. But they are free and handy, since they were growing right at the pond site. 

Every time it rained, the bridge was way too slippery to walk across safely. It was constantly covered in a thin film of moss and algae. Plus, the 2x6 boards I used for the walkway had been recycled, so they were close to 20 years old now. Many were showing signs of rot here and there. Time to replace them for safety sake. 

The first job was too remove the weedy and misshapened trees. That opened up the pond to some sun, which should help control the moss and fungus. 

(Above.....looking down on the pond from the hillside steps. Trees removed.)

Next, the steps that has been made out of tree trucks had to go. They were rotting into soil from being constantly wet for the past two years. I'm not exaggerating. They never dried out. I saw dozens and dozens of mushrooms sprouting from each one! Shame they weren't the edible kind. So they were replaced by concrete steps with imbedded rocks. Below, Crusty approves of the new steps. While the log steps were woodsy, cheap, and farm sourced, these cement steps will be attractive, give safe footing, and last a lifetime. At least the rocks were farm sourced. 

I recently acquired some 24' long 4x6's from a friend at a very good price. Plus numerous 2x6's from another friend who had bought them years ago but never built the deck he had planned. The lumber came in handy for making the bridge supports and treads. I used three of the beams to support the 4' wide 2x6 planks. Ah, this bridge is now strong and should last a good 20 years or more. The cutesy handrail is just for show. It's too flimsy. Eventually I'll find the right tree to make a sturdier handrail. The railing posts are made from ohia trees this time, a much better choice. 

The pond hosts hundreds of mosquito fish and a few dozen guppies, and 9 young koi. To offer the fish shelter, over half the pond is shaded via plants or the bridge. For the next week I'll be keeping an eye on the water temperature and watch the fish's behavior. If the water gets too warm, I'll be adding more plants to shade it more. 

Here's 8 of the koi fish. No matter how long I tried, I couldn't get all 9 in one photo. But 8 is pretty good considering I'm working with a bunch of fish. The largest one is 7" long. The smallest is 3 1/2". When they were purchased they were only 1 1/2" to 2". Their job in this farm is to eat the cane toad eggs and young tadpoles. Last year they were too small to get the job done, but this year they have been 100% successful so far. 

Those pond plants are pennywort and azolla. I've been confining the plants to 1/2 of the pond, harvesting the excess growth. But I might encourage it to cover 3/4 or more of the pond if more sun protection is needed. Both are useable as fodder for the livestock, though often I simply dig it into the garden to add  nutrients to the soil. Now that the pond is getting sunlight, I might add a few water hyacinths for color and foliage variety.

I have two more tasks to get completed.1- Put up the wood edging around the outer sides of the pond. Purely for asthetics. 2- Scrub down the hillside stairs and reapply a coat of stain. It's time for maintenance. At the same time I will apply grit to the treads to address the slippery factor. 

Pond Update

On June 25th I directed our house catchment tank's overflow to the new pond. Not knowing if the rain would continue or not, I didn't want to rob water from our house water cache. I was only willing to fill the pond with water that would otherwise go to waste. Well, the rain has continued, and rained, and more rain. It's rained a little bit every night since! So the pond is rapidly filling up. But it's also turning greenish already, so I need to add all the other pond elements in order to get the algae overgrowth under control. 

Today I transferred some water plants to the pond.  They have been helping to keep the mini ponds healthy, so now they can help with the big pond. Water hyacinths, water lettuce, a green filament type thing, and another stemmy plant with round leaves that I've forgotten the name of. These grow with no help from me and reproduce, creating abundant excess. So I'm continuously harvest the excess for the compost bins. 

Early this morning first thing I netted about 50 guppies from the mini ponds and transferred them to the big pond. They've been in there all day and look fine so far. With a new pond I'm never sure that the initial fish will survive, but so far so good. If they are still alive in the morning, then I'll transfer another hundred or more. Their number one job will be to eat the mosquito larvae. The mini ponds currently have too many fish in them, so the timing it right to use the abundant population to stock the new pond. 

The mini ponds also have small snails. I noticed that the water cleared up in the mini pond that I inadvertently introduced snails to. So I transferred snails to all the other mini ponds, and all the others cleared up too. I concluded that snails were a valuable asset to pond ecology, at least here in my climate. Therefore I added about a hundred or more snails to the new pond. 

Now we wait and see. Will the water balance out ok? I won't know for a couple of weeks. In the meantime I'll work on finishing the edging and landscaping. 

Pond Update

I'm finally filling the pond. 

I got the liner in a couple weeks ago, but I wasn't happy with the way it was sitting. So I ended up removing it then recontouring the bottom of the pond. I wanted the lowest point to be dead center in the bridge and slightly to the side so that it would be easy to use a dip net to clean out the bottom debris, you know...all the leaves, twigs, and fish muck that normally ends up on the bottom of ponds. I sloped the bottom of the pond so that everywhere was heading toward that low spot. After being satisfied with the results, I carefully replaced the liner. Well, that took me hours. Could have gotten the liner back in in 10 minutes if I didn't care about a hundred holes in the liner, but I'm one of those picky people who insists that their pond liner should hold water.  :)

So....I got the liner in and guess what, it rained almost an inch. Egads. I hadn't had time to stretch the liner in order to get the major folds and wrinkles out. So yesterday I carefully scooped all the water out. Rather than take a chance of a repeat, I immediately tugged, pushed, massaged, and kneeded the liner into the shape I wanted, getting it as smooth as I could. And just I time too, because last night it rained almost 2 inches! Actually that was good. I worked on tugging the liner here and there and managed to get more wrinkles out and stretch the liner into place. 

As you can see, a heavy rain blows tree leaves into the pond. I expect that. No problem. I plan on netting some out every week and adding them to the garden. I figure if I do a bit each week it will prevent the pond from becoming an eventual bog. Plus the leaves/fish poop combination should work well for the garden. 

Tomorrow I'll run a hose from the house catchment tank overflow, so that any excess water can be channelled to the new pond. And I'll add numerous buckets of pond water from one of the already established ponds in order to introduce the micro organisms and algae that the pond needs to become balanced. As the pond fills I'll be stretching the liner until it doesn't stretch anymore. Then I'll use a cable to tie the liner permanently into place so that it cannot slip if the pond water level goes down for some reason......such as pumping it out to water the garden during a drought. I'm also going to cut off some of the excess liner material (the liner is for a much taller tank) so that I can use it to create a waterfall. That's a project that should be fun. 

Now that the pond is filling, I'll work on completing the sides. Haven't decided yet exactly how it will turn out, so we'll see. 

New Pond

I'm finally taking some action on creating the next pond. All my previous ponds were mini ponds designed for mosquito control. Then range from holding five gallons to 50 gallons and are home to dozens of little guppies. But this next pond is going to be far bigger. Perhaps a home to tilapia and koi? 

This pond started out with the top ring we removed from the ag-catchment tank. The tank was too tall for it to capture water off the new barn's roof. I saved the ring figuring that it would come in handy one day. Well, it's finally "some day". 

A while back we built stairs down the from the house to the lower field. At the base of the stairs is a dry seasonal creek bed which is "dead" because a landowner above us bulldozed and contoured his land, thus destroying the dry bed as a rainwater runoff channel. With the creek bed safety deactivated, we decided to built a footbridge across it and make a pond underneath the footbridge. Now the saved catchment tank ring has come in handy. 

Last year we got this far. The metal ring was installed under the footbridge. We made a concrete circle for the ring to sit on and then put a layer of sand in the bottom. Then other jobs seemed more important, so thus project stalled. 

Last week I stopped into the water catchment store on my way back from Kona. Just stopped on impulse I guess. Came out with a catchment tank liner. Ok, now I had a job. Today, after letting the liner warm up in the sun, it got spread into the ring thusly.........

It's not quite smoothed and stretched enough yet for filling, but it's almost there. But it rained for a few minutes, putting "first water" into our new pond. So, it's on it's way! 

Right now it looks so incredibly white-white. So out of place. But once it is filled I'll be finishing off the rim with decorative wood, rocks, and plants. 

This is as far as we got. Running water to it for filling will be another day.