Beahive
I am surprised at the amount of rocks you have in the bottom of your pond. Is the whole bottom covered with them? Is this why the pond clean out? I ask because I know rocks on the bottom of a pond can be a real breeding ground for anaerobic bacterias. Just wondering - I know in your pictures that your water is always crystal clear and your fish always look very healthy.
Happy Ponds- the upside of ponding
The whole pond is covered with rocks of all sizes. The pond was in need of a good cleaning as a plant I put in last year was taking over (can't think of the name) and there was so much sediment I could not see the beautiful rocks.
They also cleaned all the filters,and flushed the lines and cleaned out the pump. It is amazing how much "junk" accumulates over the years. Pond looks very nice now and the Koi are happy to be out of the holding tub.
The pond is crystal clear and I can see the bottom now.
This message was edited Mar 28, 2010 9:09 PM
A frog under water.
Hello Beahive,
It took quite a while for me to reach the end of this thread.... So many beautiful frogs... did you bring them to your pond or did they come to you. i notice you have a fence surrounding your yard, does that keep the frogs in. my pond also froze and we had 65 inches of snow, we found 3 big bullfrogs dead in our waterfall. One survived. This is our 3rd summer with a pond , ours is similar to your 3200 gallons too. i am on east coast. Don't you have cold winters there what about your koi ? I have sun fish and comets. When we cleaned out our pond we put the fish in a baby pool. How many fish do you have in your pond /// so many questions LOL I love your pond and its great to share information with each other. I have a raccoon who is a predator sometimes. I live in Maryland.
Elaine
Elaine, glad to made it through this thread. Most of my frogs have found my pond. I am not sure how or why as there are plenty of lakes,rivers and culverts for them to choose from around here. I did have some tadpoles brought to my home last year by my daughters boyfriends as they need to be relocated from dried up culverts. The fence does not seem to deter them. They can squeeze under I suppose! LOL . It does get cold here in the winter but i am sure not as cold as MD. The lowest I recall in the 3 years I have lived here is 11 deg.(only a few days at that temp.) Normal winter temps are in the low 30's. Yuck! (coming from CA it is a big change for me) I keep my pond running year round to keep it from freezing. On those real cold days, I do get some ice so I put in a de-icer to keep the water flowing. I have 20+ Koi and they all seem to be doing great. They all survived the winter. They were all placed into a large plastic tub when the pond was cleaned up. Racoons can be a big problem for some ponds. Mine does not have much "shoreline" so it would be hard for them to get in and catch mine. A heron was a problem until I bought a plastic decoy Heron and that seems to have worked. It is always sad when you find a dead frog. I had a huge frog named Big Mama who I loved so much. I have a thread about her. http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/985971
I also rescued one this week and I have posted a few pictures & story on this forum. It is called frog 911. Here she is looking a bit dazed from her ordeal.
This message was edited May 1, 2010 2:00 PM
This message was edited May 1, 2010 2:00 PM
Well, no frogs in this pond actually not much of anything in it yet. It is my bathtub pond and I empty it and pull everything out for the winter. Not that you can tell right now but I just cleaned and filled it a week ago and moved just one plant in it. I am babysitting my GS and his baby ducks for a few days while his Mom has some surgery. We thought they would like the bath tub and boy they sure did. LOL
The water looks pretty bad but it wasn't too bad until I started using it as a farm pond. LOL
One more, after about and hours swim I took them out and they followed me around the yard while I watered the plants. I will say that I'm real happy with this bathtub pond it looked really good last year and has turned into a nice little water feature.
How cute are those ducklings! I saw some baby chick at the local feed store in town and I wanted to take them all home.(can't have them where I live..darn!)
Thanks BeaHive,
I turn my pond off the end of October , just keep a couple of bubblers and a heated deicer in to keep a hole in the ice. Last night when i went out to turn off the sprinkler all of the frogs screech and jump into the water. all frogs are afraid of us... Once a squirrel was startled and jumped into my pond. we have a lot of animals in our yard and birds. I am attaching aphone of a bull frog. See if you have the same kind? it would be interesting. I had a heron also , although he didn;t get any of the fish. I believe I have about 30 fish. some had babys (fry)... sometimes I fee my fish orange halves, they eat all og the paulp and leave the peel. I also feed them earth worms which they swallow whole.They will also eat zucchini, and corn kernels. In three years i lost one fish, it was this year when i lost the fish. we had an exceptionally hard winter this year. what is your temptures like right now. Any lillys blooming ?
Elaine I have a sony camera too.... I love my camera !!!
here is another frog in my pond
here is a shot of my pond this winter.... Burrr................
Nice pictures. The one of your pond in winter amazes me. Hard to believe anything would survive being covered with that much snow. Our temps are still in the 40's at night and 50'-60' during the day. Still have lots of rain which I hope will go away soon! I have tried feeding grapefruit to my Koi, but they were not interested. My water lilies are growing and had my first leaf break to the surface. It will be awhile before any blooms.
No lily's yet either. I did however see the first hummingbird and first dragonfly yesterday. My lily leaves are coming to the service too. This is a very exciting time of year for pond.
Very nice pond!
Very pretty, Yesterday was pond cleaning, sorry to say that only 4 fish survived the winter and there were no frogs. But there are plenty of frogs out here singing at night so maybe a few will decide to stay. The plants are looking good. I picked up some fertilizer and today I will get everything fertilized and back in the proper ponds.
Fish are doing great and enjoying the sun (when it is not raining) .They are always looking for a handout!
Keeping my eye on this white one. She looks a little chubby..maybe some fry on the way?
To Merry Mary, I saw those blue lillys in the dr. foster and smith catalog but , i was disappointed that they were not for my zone :( They are so pretty. each day i go out and count the Lilly pads that our coming up. Its a little game to keep me occupied till the Lilly flowers come. Its amazing how many leaves come up each day ! I am having a graduation party for my daughter at the end of the month and hoping that one will open by then >>>>
I picked up a few gold fish today. I looked at the Koi but my ponds really aren't the type to display Koi. One of these days we will build the big pond and then I will have some.
bobGTD....I have been looking again for more. I'm not sure mine survived this year's long winter freezes, which we are not used to having. I absolutley love them, the color lights up the whole yard, even if it's only 1 or 2 blooms.
I saw them in the dr foster and smith catalog , the little blue lillys with the yellow center. I have been successful ordering Lilly's from the internet and all have survived.
So sorry to hear about your fish dying holly. That is very distressing . Even tho we had a terrible winter , the worst in my 57 years on this earth i only had one fish die and it was a sunfish. I also had One tadpole died but 10 others survived. Its strange that these tadpoles take so long to become frogs , i think they will be bull frogs. my first year of ponding, i had tropical lilys and they were purple and blue and opened at night. But they are not hardy , now i only have hardy ones that survive the winter. I have been counting the lily pads up to 67 now. waiting for the first bloom :)
Elaine
My pond today. Iris are blooming and it's beginning to look like spring around here. Now only if the sun would shine!
awesome pics ladies
Last year I got three plecostumus sucker fish and put them in a 5 gallon bucket outdoors with some water plants. They did fine until February and they all died one day. Got down to 40 or 50 so I guess it was too cold for tropical fish. Our new pond is 5x5x3 and the front side faces my patio door. I got the rubber liner on ebay. The front side has glass, so we will see what's going-on under water, similar to a one-sided aquarium. The plan is to sit in my easy chair in the front room and look out through the glass door at the pond on the patio. A diamond in the rough! My problem is the easy chair doesn't get me outside to finish the project.
Seeing all your beautiful work in the pictures above makes me want to get-er-done.
The natural rain water has collected there, just waited to see what the natural chemistry will do.
No fish yet. Just a few dragon flies and a couple very LOUD frogs. Sqwak-sqwak-sqwak!
BeaHive, your pond is my ideal -- Not that the others are beautiful, but it most closely mirrors mine in size, configuration, rock, and skimmer. I do not have all the lovely greenery, and will never have it so lush because of where I am, but I notice that you use pots here and there to add to the arrangement. I have printed a color picture of your pond from here to keep as my target.
Do you have all koi or are there some goldies in there. I was told you cannot mix them. Also told not to have rock on the bottom. I am so confused. Now two of my new koi are dead, I have removed the gravel, put in meds and am beside myself. they insisted the rock had to go, and I just hate what it did to the look of my pond shallows. And I don't have the beautiful lily pads to hide it at all. May not have them til the end of July, just in time for fall.
Sorry, this is such an uplifting thread, and it did make me feel better. Just a little discouraged to try to hard and get such negative results. And I guess the inability to sift through all the 'advice' that seems to fly in the face of the lovely ponds I see here. Of course, we don't have your temps and I know that makes a difference in what 'grows' in the water, good and bad.
Mstella, there is a lot of conflicting information, isn't there? I don't think anything is true for everyone in all situations. Personally, I subscribe to the no rocks theory, but I absolutely love how it looks when I see a rock covered pond that is crystal clear. Some people obviously experience success with rocks, as evidenced by Beahives gorgeous pond! But you need to be prepared to clean it out somewhat regularly which is quite the chore. I have gotten used to my rockless pond and I find I don't even notice the liner anymore. If you can't grow waterlilies, maybe you can find other ways to take attention away from the liner. Planting perennials and small trees around a pond creates a lovely reflection in the water. Maybe a small weeping tree near "the shallows"? Can you grow JMs in your area?
I do have a crabapple next to the pond and the surface reflects the tree and the clouds sometimes obscuring the bottom. Others have said that the bottom will grey out after a bit and not be so obtrusive. My feeling is that the rock didn't hurt the pond, but when we hauled it out, oh what a mess was underneath. I did have plants and flowers around it last year but this year we were going to have work done on it (which never happened) so I not only didn't add plants, I dug some up and moved them. Looks pretty bare. Sorry, but what are JM's? I am sure I should know but it isn't clicking? Magnolias??
Japanese Maples.
Sorry, Japanese Maples.
Oh. Yes, I love them. I looked at some at Lowe's the other day but they are only good to -10 / -20. Could give them a try.
Did you notice an echo here? lol. I love how everyone chips in to help. Makes it all really nice. And very appreciated.
LOL, My ponds are doing pretty good this year a few glitches, I left the water lotus in the bottom of my deeper pond and by the time I realized it was too late to move it to the shallower one. The new Tropical WL I ordered died right away. They looked fine when I potted them up but went down hill very fast. Other than that they are looking good.
You can see the water lotus sticking up in is pic. That small pond is 3ft deep.
Holly, what is the light green stuff in a patch next to the flowers? And is the little pond next to the black sundial?
Looks like we posted at the same time, Holly! Nice picture too
That is a variegated ornamental grass.
LOL on the sun dial. I can see why you thought that. It is a bird bath with a piece of driftwood sitting in it. The water pumps up though the birdbath and drips over the edge back into the pond.
Here is a closer look
I love that bright green grass. I assume you keep it under control by having it isolated in that island and you can mow around it. I see the little birdy now. I really didn't look closely enough the first time.
I am probably going to take about 1/2 of that grass out this fall. It would be a lot taller too if I hadn't had Ric cut in back a couple of weeks ago. It does look great with my iris.
Heavens to mergatroid!! is that the pond? The little round circle? Amazing! It must really be well balanced ecologically. Better than I have managed. It is adorable.
Thanks it is about 6ft across and 3 deep. It's concrete with a pedestall for the birdbath to sit on. There is no filter just a pump that pumps up thru both pedestalls to the bowl. I have fish, frogs and snails living in there, at this point you don't really see the fish as the water lilies have pretty much covered most of the open surface. The water lotus, water iris, pickerel weed and american water willow are in there this year, I change up the plants from year to year. I have two other small ponds but this is the deepest and where I overwinter all the fish and plants. This was taken last year.
