Water Gardening: Cleaning out pond, 0 by rjuddharrison

rjuddharrison wrote:
Impish----
If you are building a pond - even with no plants or fish- scoop out the debris in the bottom first to look for Dragon Fly larvae-- You may be killing a generation of Dragon Flies that eat bad bugs in the yard. Their lives begin in water- Chlorine...baaaaaad.!!! I just had to clean out my pond for a crack...and I always check through the old leaves before tossing aside- I have a rain barrel that I relocate the dragonfly larvae to. I photographed a few of the dragoflies- Last summer I was rewarded by watching a dragon fly larvae crawl from the pond and hatch out just like a butterfly does.
Here is a picture- They aren/t the prettiest..but...they don/t bite or anything- They feed on mosquito larvae and other water critters that will take up residency. Of course if your maintaining a continously chlorinated water feature- then you shoudn/t have to worry about it.
Dragonflies lay their eggs in any kind of water area - including my rain barrell.
Rj


This message was edited Feb 2, 2006 8:40 PM