A little pond that I never get tired of...

[milhousebarks]

Hi all,

I've always like plants and fish and have done some bonsai and a few fly traps, plus kept and bred a variety of fish. So of course a pond was the obvious next obsession. We had just done some renovations and had an area that had reasonable sun, but had been turned to a patch of dirt in the process of the renovation, so it was a natural place for a pond.

The pond is about a month old and I can already see the things I would do differently, but I'll live with my mistakes for now. The biggest thing is that I used too small of a liner (10x15) and didn't have enough at the edges to put the liner beneath stones around the edge before turning it upward, so I have the liner exposed around the top edge a lot more than I'd like since I had to go straight up and just tuck the small remaining edge under rocks at the top. The pond is about 6x4 (although more round than square) and is 2 feet deep in the middle with a shelf on one side, plus a separate 2x3 bog area that the water is pumped through as my filter. So far the water is clear and my dozen rosy reds and 3 goldfish (1 albino, plus 2 shubie) seem happy. I have graceful cattails, iris, pickeral rush, japanese rush and pennywort in the bog, and a momo botan lotus, a hermine hardy lily, a pygmy yellow hardy lily, yellow floating heart, water hyacynth, frogbit, hornwort and some tag along duckweed in the pond. Occasionally I'm pretty sure I see a frog dash off to the bottom when I show up, but I'm not entirely sure. I certainly hope the frog is there and stays and brings along a friend or two.

Whenever anyone in the family wants to find me, they can usually just come out to the pond and see me there watching the fish or peering below the surface to see if any new leaves are coming up from the lilies or lotus. The lotus had a late start and just has the first leaf breaking out above the surface after producing about a half dozen floaters...

I look forward to learning from all of you and maybe trading or giving away some of the things that are already reproducing faster than my little pond can handle. Frogbit anyone?

I'll add some photos when I get a chance.

 

[Fishylove]

Welcome welcome! Great to have ya!

 

[Mmathis]

Welcome! Can't wait for the pictures! Where do you live?

 

[RobAmy]

Sounds like you enjoy your pond very much. Welcome

 

[addy1]

Welcome to our group!

 

[haver79]

Welcome to the forum. Would love to see pictures.

 

[milhousebarks]

The hole. You can see the high area between the future bog and pond. I replaced this with cinder blocks and then a row of bricks across the top of the blocks with a gap in the middle to let the water run over. All of that is now under the liner which goes under the entire thing. I intend to cut a piece of slate for this gap in the near future to make it a small waterfall.

The day after I got it filled and trimmed with stone on the liner a big rain ran water over my gutter and muddy water into the pond. I have since raised the back edge of the pond to keep the possible overflow from running into the pond. I left the mud and ran the water through some quilt batting to get it fairly clean and then just let it eventually settle later. You can see the piece of PVC I put together to distribute the water at the base of the gravel in the bog.

This is the PVC with the pump hooked up before I put the pvc in and filled the bog with p gravel. The water was how it looked after my filtering of the mud. Still not great, but better.

Here is the pond this morning.

And from above. You can see I've got a lot of work still to do with the landscaping around the pond (actually there is almost nothing else done yet!) You can see where my paths are going off the back porch to the driveway and also over to a basement walkout.

 

[milhousebarks]

And here is the bog area. I left the p gravel below the top of the water since I prefer the look. I realize it would work better with the gravel all the way up, so I may need to do that at some point if it seems to need more filtering. So far it seems to be working great. I also moved some of the frogbit and my water hyacynth up to the bog area while the other bog plants grow out. I found I'm not a fan of these just floating around my pond and bumping into the fixed plants.

Here is the floating heart with a bunch of frogbit infiltrating. The floating heart grows like crazy and I keep having to reach in and tuck new growth back into the pot so it doesn't start making it into the pots of other plants. But it does bloom almost every day and the fish love swimming through the underwater jungle of all the stems.

Here is my Hermine water lily with a pot of water hawthorn resting on the edge. I'm hoping when the lily isn't blooming the water hawthorn will be. I got my 2 small water lily plants from Texas Water Lillies about 2 weeks ago, so they are still recovering. So far they've lost a few leaves but have made up for those with new leaves.

Here is the pygmy yellow. Such tiny leaves! I really like this one and am wondering if it is the same as Helvola? You can see the happy rosy reds below.

And finally the momo botan lotus. One aerial leaf up and one on the way. It got a late start and was just a small tuber so I'm wondering if and when I'll see any flowers this year. Water is a bit low even though it is drizzling this morning, so I'll probably add more water this afternoon.

 

[sissy]

love the mirror image of your house in the pond .

 

[j.w]

milhousebarks
Very nice pond and you have lots of great plants. My water hawthorne is just now starting to take off w/blooms. For awhile there I thought it was toast but it made a great comeback

 

[bettasngoldfish]

Welcome! Nice little pond you have there. Mistakes or not I have a feeling you would be changing things. People with ponds tend to do that

 

[haver79]

Welcome! Cute pond and love the bog. Looks like your plants like it too!

 

[CometKeith]

milhousebarks, Welcome to gpf! It looks like you are off to a great start. There are a lot of learning curves for a new ponder but it looks like you did your research. There is no such thing as a finished pond!

 

[michey1st]

Welcome Milhousebarks! Our ponds are remarkably similar! I used a 10 x 15 liner, have a bog that waterfalls in, and am running a few inches short on liner around the edges -- still trying to figure out the best way to tackle that, lol!

Glad you could join us!

 

[j.w]

Just had to ask.....................is this where you got Milhouse's dogs name you use here? I searched on the net and found this and I'm not up on the Simpson's show but figured this had to be where you got that forum name


Milhouse's Dog (Lhasa Apso), is a pet dog that Milhouse Van Houten owns.
The dog is first seen when Milhouse took it for a walk, right after Lisa broke up with Nelson Muntz. After Lisa tells him that her next crush could be almost anybody, Milhouse jumps in the air with glee, while choking the dog that is still attached to the leash.

In Replaceable You, it's revealed that the dog has licked tongues with Milhouse at least six times deliberately. Milhouse wanted to use Bart's Cootie Shot for both their tongues. However, it was never finished:

"Bart, is your cootie shot ready? I really need that shot. My dog and I accidentally touched tongues."

"How is it accidentally when this is the fifth time?”

That's just the funniest forum name I have ever heard!