- Joined
- May 16, 2016
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Hiya to everyone from (finally) sunny northern Portugal!
My husband David and I moved here nearly 7 yrs ago after he retired. In December 2014 my father in law aged 90 yrs no less, decided to join us - having never been abroad save in WWll to Burma and as a Royal Marine on the Artic Convoys ! This meant we had to buy a new house, which has two small ponds. Both were empty of fish or plants. One is still empty of water (except rain water ... ) and the other we planted up last year and introduced some very healthy adult 'goldfish' that an American friend gave to us as she had way too many for her pond as hers were very fecund !! She has lived here for over 30 yrs)
She gave us seven, along with a water lily. I had bought one too so had two flowering last year : two shades of pink. Very pretty. The fish are healthy and there are a lot ?12 x 3 inch black fry in the pond now zinking about, along with around 8 small local frogs that are greenish with a bright green stripe down the middle of their backs. I have another water lily with smaller leaves that was only put in the pond at the end of last year, so have forgotten exactly what colour it will be .. but the leaves are up ... so hopefully will soon have some buds ! (The others are almost out !)
The pond has a pump and what I call a 'bubble' fountain - we did have water cascading over a rock ledge but one) the pump wasn't strong enough and two) due to the heat here the water evaporated very quickly ...We don't have any blanket weed ie string algae ... but we do have a murky sort of water. I have a small bag of barley at the bottom which helped last year, but I think I need to haul it up and perhaps put in a new one ! If anyone has ideas about clearing up the water I would be grateful. The fish seem to be ok with it as it is oxygenated by the bubbler !!
So that's us in a nutshell !! I am looking forward to learning a lot more about ponds as we never had one back in the UK! (I am English and my husband is Scottish)
My husband David and I moved here nearly 7 yrs ago after he retired. In December 2014 my father in law aged 90 yrs no less, decided to join us - having never been abroad save in WWll to Burma and as a Royal Marine on the Artic Convoys ! This meant we had to buy a new house, which has two small ponds. Both were empty of fish or plants. One is still empty of water (except rain water ... ) and the other we planted up last year and introduced some very healthy adult 'goldfish' that an American friend gave to us as she had way too many for her pond as hers were very fecund !! She has lived here for over 30 yrs)
She gave us seven, along with a water lily. I had bought one too so had two flowering last year : two shades of pink. Very pretty. The fish are healthy and there are a lot ?12 x 3 inch black fry in the pond now zinking about, along with around 8 small local frogs that are greenish with a bright green stripe down the middle of their backs. I have another water lily with smaller leaves that was only put in the pond at the end of last year, so have forgotten exactly what colour it will be .. but the leaves are up ... so hopefully will soon have some buds ! (The others are almost out !)
The pond has a pump and what I call a 'bubble' fountain - we did have water cascading over a rock ledge but one) the pump wasn't strong enough and two) due to the heat here the water evaporated very quickly ...We don't have any blanket weed ie string algae ... but we do have a murky sort of water. I have a small bag of barley at the bottom which helped last year, but I think I need to haul it up and perhaps put in a new one ! If anyone has ideas about clearing up the water I would be grateful. The fish seem to be ok with it as it is oxygenated by the bubbler !!
So that's us in a nutshell !! I am looking forward to learning a lot more about ponds as we never had one back in the UK! (I am English and my husband is Scottish)
