I imagine they will at some point. LOL
What is this in my waterlilies?
We'll find out this year! ;-) And if they do, I'll post a photo on this thread!
Should be interesting to see. I can just picture a dime sized flower. LOL
Hey, Becky.. I bought CHEAP Walmart .28 cent goldfish for my pond. They eat the mosquito larvae .. grow relatively slowly and if they should die.. are inexpensive to replace. I did manage to keep them alive for 3 years. Kept them alive through a traumatic frozen and drained pond this winter only to kill them a couple weeks ago with a pond fill error!. .. just replaced 8 fish for under $3 I am really upset and actually did cry when I realized they were dead. They had grown to about 6" and were beautiful. I do use the dunks in my teeny tiny water pots that are way too small for fish .. those that the water gets too hot in the summer. I bought a big supply on e-bay for about $80. It was a BIG package of dunks. I break them up depending on the surface area of the water... I could trade you some for a few of the little water lilies! LOL
Tammie - Cool! Our Walmart here doesn't sell fish or any pets anymore. :-( And the pet stores are not cheap even for such common fish. I can't use brightly colored fish because the water fowl here will go after them. There are a lot of water birds here locally! I did purchase some minnow-like fish though and released them in my pre-formed water ponds. Not very big ponds, but the fish were small. I haven't seen the fish, so don't know if they survived or not. Not seen any floating fish, so I think they are still around under all the waterlily pads. I bought mating pairs. Released 4 into each of my two container ponds. I do know they were eating the mosquito larvae though when I first released them into the ponds, so I hope they are still alive and getting fat! I do purchase and use the mosquito dunks. As you know, they aren't cheap. I don't know how many you got for $80 on ebay, but they sell for $10-12 for a package of 6. And they don't last long because I have so many water containers. But they DO work! I had an infestation of mosquito larvae and then used the dunks and they were all dead in the water the very next day. :-) I know the water plant nurseries here use the dunks in their ponds, too!
I currently have the baby water lilies in a bin to try to get them to grow. They are putting out teeny pads, but not all of them. So I don't know yet if they are worth trading or selling.There is another person here who dmailed me interested in some of them, too. I have no idea what color the blooms will be or if they are a cross of different cultivars. I lose waterlilies every winter ... especially the tropicals. And some waterlilies tend to be dominant and take all the nutrients from others which eventually kills them. Some waterlilies are more aggressive growing than others! Most of mine lately have had yellow blooms. I haven't seen any other colors. Though some of the babies in the bin have the red pads. I believe they are the red/pink night blooming water lilies that I thought I had lost several years ago. Apparently, they made babies but never got big enough to bloom again. I am curious to see what these babies produce. And I am growing some in teacups to see if they will be miniature waterlilies. So far, the pads have been teeny but producing many pads and they look healthy, just tiny waterlilies. Really cute! Now to see if they will actually bloom for me as miniatures. :-)
I'll let you know if the ones I have in the bin actually do well enough to trade. Right now they are so small.
This message was edited Apr 26, 2011 1:03 AM
Here is a great buy on dunks on e-bay... they will last you all summer .. they do work!
http://cgi.ebay.com/SUMMIT-MOSQUITO-DUNKS-20-PER-CARD-MOSQUITO-CONTROL-/370495757753?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5643449db9
I was a little nervous about buying something that was not the brand at home depot but they work just fine in my pots. Sure is a lot less than what they are in those 6 packs!
Becky, the reason you have so many of those tubers is because you have Nymphaea mexicana. It's the only hardy that I know of that seems to make roots like that. They are all capable of making plants, but separating them from the main plant and they will take a while to grow. Most of the ones that I separated from the main plant took 2-3 months before the first flowers. They will all produce yellow flowers. I have this plant and it is very invasive... the runners will grow into any soil they find and eventually will take over.
If you want, keeping each set in a small cup of soil, they will eventually begin to make leaves. If you are looking for very small varieties, try burgundy princess... It's the smallest I've seen. If you are into tropicals, Daubin can be kept very small like bonsai. I have a blooming one in a 3 oz cup.
I should have read the thread better...
For fish, I use mollies, platties, and guppies. All are live bearers and are excellent at eating mosquitoes. What is nice about using mollies or platties over gambusia is that they come in much nicer colors so you can see them swimming in the tubs. I also grow water lilies in tubs ranging from 15-50 gallons and all of them are standing water and all have loads of fish in them. The only concern for the fish is if the container is too small. It can then get too hot and cook the poor fishes.
As for your tubers, those definitely do look like tropicals. You can bury them about half an inch under the media (turface is what I use) and place them 3-4 inches under the surface of the water. The warmth really gets them going and in no time you'll have some nice small plants growing.
I've attached a photo of my setup. I have mostly tropicals and a few hardies.
My heavens, dahos77, you surely didn't let the lack of a pond slow you up a bit!! What a neat and creative set up.
Thanks! My family isn't into "permanent" things in the yard, so tubs were beckoning to me. Although limited in size, it does help to keep the plants manageable. Most mature plants are potted in 6inch to 2 gallon pots. The babies are in 3oz to 14 oz plastic cups.
Currently, I have about 27 varieties in my tubs. 19 tropicals (11 viviparous), and 8 hardys. I have to say that I am good with tropicals and definitely a hardy newbie as they are all growing, but none are flowering... Any suggestions on getting the hardys to bloom is greatly appreciated!
Tammie - Thanks for the heads up on those cheaper dunks in larger quantity!!! :-)
dahos - So you think those small rooted water lilies are Nymphaea mexicana? I was wondering about them too, but not sure. No other water lilies produce babies like that? Here is a photo of what I believe to be the bloom.
I added guppies and some other fish that is supposed to eat algae and larvae in the ponds. I didn't get bright colored fish though (to prevent them from being eaten by the water birds). :-) Your ponds and water container set-up is very nice!
This message was edited Apr 27, 2011 9:50 PM
My set-up is just a garden area with two of the pre-formed ponds and some other water/bog marginal plants in water containers.
And I am growing some of them in teacups and coffee cups. Like this one, which I believe has a night blooming pink water lily flower.
Here is a photo of the coffee cups with water lilies in them. And a frog is getting a drink by sitting in the smaller tea cup! LOL!
This message was edited Apr 27, 2011 9:57 PM
Becky, that is definitely not mexicana. Mexican has lightly mottled leaves with red undersides and a completely yellow flower. Unlike other lilies, it grows a runner from each plant that will plunge into the soil and then turn up allowing another plant to grow. It'll keep chaining plants together as long as there is space for it to keep spreading out. For whatever reason, you'll get those banana like roots which can also make new plants. The first picture you had of the roots was definitely mexicana. The photos of your current water garden are of another variety.
With the hardys that I've seen, most have a distinct rhizome that creeps along the bottom with new plants making more tubers off the main one, whereas tropicals grow vertically with their tuber growing below the crown.
I've attached a photo of the mexicana flower. It doesn't bloom very often for me, but I'm not too good with hardys.
Thankfully, don't have predatory waterbirds here.
I couldn't do that with the coffee cups. They'd just get too hot. :(
They get pretty hot here too, but it doesn't seem to bother the water lilies. Go figure!
Here is another container with water lilies. The leaves look molted on some of those. Also yellow blooms. I don't know ... do you think those are Nymphaea mexicana?
That looks much more like it. I have to say that yours is doing excellent. I've noticed that only the smaller leaves tend to be more mottled.
If you pull the plant out, you should be able to see the white runners coming out from the base of the plant and plunging into the dirt. Almost like really strange thick roots.
Mine are all in pots. Which is why those banana root bunches were inside the pots under the main roots. I didn't see any runners, but they were hard to get out of the water containers/ponds because the roots were all tangled together even though they were all in their own pots. So I have no idea. I was given something called "Inner Light" by an online trader a couple of years ago. Do you suppose it might have been Nymphaea mexicana instead? It also had yellow blooms. I am at a loss to explain having such a cultivar. Nothing I bought or traded for was named Nymphaea mexicana.
Becky, I just read your posts, and I'd love to have a hardy water lily. I understand your colorful fish attract waterfowl. I lost a bunch of pretty fish to blue herons and raccoons. If you have fish, you don't need dunks as long as you don't feed the fish too often. If you have fish, you need to provide them with a place to hide. We use drain pipes (6 inch diameter) from the hardware store.
If you put an inexpensive bubbler, mosquitos won't lay eggs in moving water. It has a little compressor that you could probably protect from the weather. You attach a small diameter clear tube, and that could be as long as you'd like, so that little compressor could be indoors. However, fish are more interesting.
It is almost 6 years since we moved into this house, and I'd bet we've bought 2 dozen fish for our small pond. We lost several in a malicious raccoon attack where they just bit off the heads and threw the bodies around. After a number of trials and errors, we took the fish out of the pond and brought them indoors. The pond, however, still has marginals, and that's where I'd like to try a water lily.
Mstella, after our experiences getting our fish inside, I'd like to see you catch the koi in your pond.
I swear there is an art to catching koi.....DH has it down to a science, which works for me! ^_^
Dahos - I really like your set up with the tubs and waterlilies.
Becky, those roots are what makes mexicana invasive(I think it is banned in California). You can remove the main plant and those roots will eventually make a new plant/plants. Once you have it in the ground, it is pretty much impossible to get rid of it.
Well I think that when you traded, it is possible that the plant had some mexicana in it and it eventually took over.
Another hint for ID especially if you can't see the runners is that Mexicana tends to grow vertically like a tropical as well.
I'm pretty sure that the person you traded with didn't send you the wrong plant as the mexicana flower is a pretty uniform yellow and inner light is a dark yellow center and light yellow/peach outside changeable. It also looks to be more mottled then mexicana as well. I've never seen inner light before, but based on what I've seen on the internet, it's pretty different. The flower you posted earlier could be inner light. Light yellow tends to be hard to pick up for a camera as the petals look white to me.
Carolyn, thanks... Always a work in progress... Too many varieties, not enough space. Any ideas on how to mazimize space are welcome!
Cathy, I love your fish picture. Is the one fish hiding behind a snow shovel? That is what that blue thing looks like. I think I will try your idea about the PVC pipes. Maybe then I could plug that hole in the rocks permanently. I just don't think it is healthy for the big ones down there. i still think they run out of oxygen when all 17 cram in that hole. I know there are caverns and tunnels behind the rock but still seems like the oxygen would deplete.
No way I can catch them as they just twitch into that cave in a heartbeat. I swear they feel the rumble (NO, I am not that big) of my steps approaching the pond.
The blue thing is actually a bucket we use when adding water. It holds about 7 gallons and we fill it with a hose and let it sit in the pond to get to temperature. Then we added some dechlorination powder and salt to each bucket load. When we were done, I turned the bucket on its side and left it there, and they have another cavern that they like.
The goldfish were not too hard to catch (there were 8 at the time). We lost 2 shortly after we moved them inside and then another small one that I thought might be full of eggs, but I don't think the water is warm enough to spawn.
We've since gotten 2 butterfly koi and 2 others, one a creamy yellow and the other a 10-inch black koi. Koi are much more aggressive than goldfish, especially the butterfly koi with the long front fins. One butterfly koi darts through the water like a little rat. There are a lot of things in an around the pond, and they swim through all of them like a playground. For an egg-laying area, I bought a fake plant that sits on top of the water, and they like hiding under it and under the marginals on stands. They are really funny. And yes, they can be very noisy.
When I finally see who survived the winter I want to get another couple of koi but not from Walmart or a local box store. There is a koi dealer in Washington State that is reasonable and the freight isn't too awful from there. I had three coming from Kentucky but when his fish arrived from Japan they had a sickness and he lost them all. Fortunately I got a full refund.
This picture is feeding time in the pond. Took it August 2009. The one in the lower front had just come up to get some food and I caught him doing the 'dive! dive!' thing.
Your fish are very pretty. I swear I have that chubby shubunkin and the yellow koi.
They do that dive thing quite a bit. I've had more than one bath from them where they grab the food and bolt. I get my fish locally. The shubunkins and other goldfish came from a water gardens landscaper. The koi came from our local dealer, "The Fish Bowl" who probably gets his fish from Dietter's Water Gardens in North Haven, CT, which is about a generous hour from here.
I get so excited when I bring home a new fish. (LOL)
We used to go every spring to get fish. It was planned and it was something we both looked forward to doing.....
We have not bought fish in quite sometime. We started keeping some of the fry that we liked from the spawnings....
Oh Carolyn, your fish are so huge and gorgeous. I would give my eyeteeth to have a pond that would support such fish. One of the prices of living where I live I guess. I suspect Marcia's fish and mine are similar.
Musashi, a koi I rescued from a local pet store (owner gave her to me as no one wanted her) was my biggest. She so enjoyed out pond after being in a 20 gallon fish bowl for so long. but she apparently couldn't handle the cold and died at the end of her first summer. but she had a good time while she was with us and we enjoyed her so much.
when she did the dive thing and flipped her long tail it was such a sight.
This message was edited Apr 28, 2011 6:02 PM
Carolyn, not only are your fish gorgeous, but you got a great photo. My fish don't usually like to smile for the camera.
Thank you both.
My largest koi, the last time we measured was 24 1/2" is the Kohaku that is 'smiling' for the camera.....
They crack me up, the koi will come to the side of the pond when I sit down or when I am standing at the top of the steps on the upper deck and they open and close their little mouths as if to say 'feed me'..... I love it when they come right out of the water.
Becky, I put an 8" square clay chimney liner in my pond. The pond is small and these things come in 2' lengths so I had to have it cut in half. I live on a salt marsh and we have dozens of herons all around. The fish can hide in the chimney pipe when the big birds or the raccoons come snooping around. Once the pond surface gets covered with lily pads, the birds can't see the fish anyway (neither can I).
I also put fish in my lotus pots but only after the leaves cover the surface so the birds can't see them. Also, I have learned that my lotus do not bloom well if I don't divide them yearly.
Becky, not sure if this was answered for you already. Call your local mosquito control and they will provide mosquito fish. You don't need an aerator for them as the plants will give off oxygen. They are small killie fish and most will survive the coldest winter or the eggs that they lay in the detritis on the bottom will. You'll get new babies without any trouble. I will take babies and move about five to new water features. They'll take it from there. I don't normally feed them. They seem to get enough from whatever is growing in the water feature. The only thing, I don't empty my containers (two aluminum water troughs and one black plastic like yours, just a little larger). I'd never find the mosquito fish amongst the black liner/plastic. I do flush the container for about twenty minutes or so twice yearly with the hose (I'm on well water so don't need to worry about the chloramine they add here). Mine are in mostly full sun. I do have algae in them, but the ones with just the mosquito fish seem to be light in it and the one with mosquito fish and a feeder goldfish from WM seems to be kept at bay by the goldfish (which I also rarely feed). Sometimes I do need to scoop out excess algae sheets, but that seems to be if I feed the fish too often.... they must no eat the food much and have enough flora and fauna to munch on. The goldfish is 4 yrs old now and still doing well.
FLStu - I will call my osquito control extension and inquire. I definitely would love some mosquito fish. How lucky that your goldfish has survived that many years. The plain mosquito fish I purchased and released into my water containers/small ponds have not been seen since. But then again, I have a lot of huge water lily leaves in both ponds so it's hard to see. I do know I have a lot of tadpoles now. Way too many. They tend to feed on my water lily pads. Grrrr ... It's alway something ...!