Gemma's babies

[BarbO]

Gemma, your pond, fish and garden are just beautiful, very well done!!

 

[Lisak1]

@Gemma - it's a paradise!

 

[Gemma]

Gemma, your pond, fish and garden are just beautiful, very well done!!

@BarbO

@Gemma - it's a paradise!

Thanks! @Lisak1 Your garden is pretty amazing too! ... makes me wanna look for fairies

 

[brokensword]

Your pond looks great and glad to hear your fish are doing fine also.
Nothing is getting into that pond for sure w/that secure top covering screen View attachment 134439

...or OUT, either!

 

[brokensword]

Thanks!
I love the way the garden turned out, but my heart is still in the ponds. I wish I could take better pics of the koi.. maybe I should hire a professional View attachment 134573

some photo tips; have the sun behind you, not in front. To reduce glare, use a lens that has a polarizing lens on it. Google if you don't know what this is but it really helps to hide reflections and let you fully see your fish. I've also found pics come out better on a cloudy day, especially since it reduces the yellow-green look from the growing algae. Use a lens at f8 to keep a decent fov. Also, takes pics BEFORE you feed them as the water will be clearer. Consider a lower angle, like laying on your stomach and holding the camera close to the surface.

And of course, I'd take the fencing off for any pics. JMHO

 

[Gemma]

some photo tips; have the sun behind you, not in front. To reduce glare, use a lens that has a polarizing lens on it. Google if you don't know what this is but it really helps to hide reflections and let you fully see your fish. I've also found pics come out better on a cloudy day, especially since it reduces the yellow-green look from the growing algae. Use a lens at f8 to keep a decent fov. Also, takes pics BEFORE you feed them as the water will be clearer. Consider a lower angle, like laying on your stomach and holding the camera close to the surface.

And of course, I'd take the fencing off for any pics. JMHO

Thanks for the tips, my fellow Michigander!

 

[Gemma]

Yaaaay! So lovely - Thanksf for sharing @Gemma - I bet they are not babies anymore - Love to see how they are doing. Can we get an update? Thx!

Thanks! I'm afraid it's too late for updates this year, the fish no longer come up to eat, and as you can see from the last pics I posted, I messed up the water clarity when I removed most of the plants, it hasn't recovered yet.

 

[Gemma]

@GBBUDD Thank you for taking the time to try and figure out a bog possibility for my pond.

I really never thought I could have a bog, but all the latest research we've done, has convinced my husband that it can be done, and so far he's proved to me to be very clever.
His idea would be to build a concrete tub behind the waterfall, making it higher than the waterfall, and have it spill either in the waterfall (if possible) or next to it. Of course it would be too deep, but we could put it on a concrete base sort of like the base for the fireplace we just built.
The water would enter the bog from the bottom , go through Aqua Blocks, then river stones, then pea gravel, and then spill into the plant pool
Take a look at these pics, tell me what you think please

This is the base for the fireplace

 

[GBBUDD]

What a beautiful slice of heaven you have and are continuing to build . But im haing a hard time seeing how the new concrete pad will tie into the pond can you take some wide angle shots of the pond and the pad in the same photo?

 

[Gemma]

What a beautiful slice of heaven you have and are continuing to build . But im haing a hard time seeing how the new concrete pad will tie into the pond can you take some wide angle shots of the pond and the pad in the same photo?

Thank you!
That pad is for a fireplace, not for the bog I posted it just to give an idea on how we would build the bog tub.
The bog would go right behind the waterfall

 

[GBBUDD]

You mentioned aqua blocks and if that is the case you probably won't need to build up much at all in order to get the bog to the height you need. The snorkel can be dug into the existing grade but then the aqua blocks are if memory serves me were 18 inches tall and add a 6" of 2 to 3 inch stone and then your foot of peastone. the hard part will be how to build the damn wall . but i believe you guys already have mastered that with the pond . so in this design your talking about from ground level your minimum bog height would be 36"

 

[Gemma]

I think the tricky part will be figuring out the spill. Do you think it could spill directly into the waterfall, or would that make it overflow?

 

[GBBUDD]

if you dump into the water fall you may have issues with splashing and getting out of the containment of the falls . but if you made more of a stream and not a waterfall it could be reduced. but building the set up where you can have two falls could be quite interesting and or if you had rubber lined completely around the now falls but the opening, and rock it just like it was a pool for the water to fall in and stack your rocks up and around the top of your now falls even if the now falls continues t work just make sure you don't push so much water at it that it doesn't poor over the sides

first pic is my bog
second is a basic aquascape bog but is missing the snorkel centipede

 

[Gemma]

Personally I would leave the existing waterfall alone, and build a slow stream/slide that goes around it by the house wall... not sure how I would do that, but there's enough room so I think it can be done

 

[Gemma]

We ended up having to shut down both ponds for almost a whole month this winter, but all fish made it ok
So far this Spring we got the waterfalls cleaned up, we plan on vacuuming the plant pools next, and then after that we'll clean the fish pools.

So I know I said I was done adding fish, but couldn't turn away from rehoming 3 beautiful koi (1 Platinum GinRin Ogon butterfly, 1 kin Matsuba butterfly and 1 Yellow and orange (?) Doitsu butterfly) that had outgrown their previous homes (two of them are over 2' long).
I just couldn't say no!... I'll have to stop doing this cause one of my ponds (3,800gls) is maxed out with 9 koi and 2 shubbies and the other one (soon to be over 6,000gls) has now 15 koi
I'll have to post pics of the koi in my other pond and the new fish