On the shady side of the fish pool

To increase oxygenation, I gave up on just having a trickling waterfall and put in a self-designed-and-created, surface rippler. As anticipated, the fish are happier (they are alive and swimming, does that equal fish happy?) An unexpected benefit from this horizontal spray across the surface of the pool is the increased moisture on the opposite side. This spring the mosses are simply showing out. I don't know what type, just know I'm pleased as punch they took up residence. I am especially pleased with what has happened to the cedar stump (snag, I'm not really sure what one calls a dead cedar tree root with a bit of stump).

Of course, I've more pictures but haven't yet figured out how to display more than one, I think that is done in the journal section but I'm new around this site and just learning my way slowly but surely. I'm glad I found Dave's Garden.

Oh, that's fantastic! I would so love to be able to grow that here :(

That's beautiful! Many people work very hard to get moss growing around their pond, most fail. Welcome to Dave's Garden! You've found the best gardening community on the web :~) Glad to have you in the DG family.

Lana

Beautiful! As Wvdaisy said, some of us work long and hard for the kind of success you've had - Watch out as you'll find that some of us have begun to cultivate different mosses, particularly to add character to water features and woodlands - we have fanatics here for everything, and we are a great group of enablers, and we love it - so as I said - watch out! Dax

The moss attaches to some of the stones on the overflow also. This narrow ripple stream allows the excess water generated by our water-source heat pump to get down to the catch basin (a large garbage can sunk into the ground with a sump pump), there to be pumped through a cartridge swimming pool filter (from a yard sale) back up to the natural water fall or to just flow on into the ditch and away. We dug this pool by hand in the early 1990's, lined it with 4 layers of black construction plastic (bought a large roll, laid it out flat and folded it). Raccoons and the sun have damaged the outermost layer but the pool still functions fine. The koi and goldfish are still here, though we've learned the hard way(dead fish) to make some improvements--The horizontal spray--which started the moss growing happily.

I gave up on just having a trickling waterfall and put in a self-designed-and-created, surface rippler

Can you eleborate on this for us? baagrant

To make our ripple-sprayer we attached a garden hose to the outlet of one of our filters. We took an end cap off a garden soaker hose and drilled several holes into the end cap. (Actually we experimented with several size holes in several different end caps and selected the one we liked best). We found a stone with a drill hole through it at our local rock yard (He said these are rejects since they have the bore holes in them! It was absolutely perfect. We had to just file down the end cap just a bit to get a tight but removable fit). We positioned the water to enter the pond horizontally.

Both the intake and the filter need cleaning so the spray is not going out as far as it normally does, but the picture should give you an idea. We've had our fish pool since the early 90s. Dug out two tree stumps, put in black, 4ml-construction plastic folded four times, placed rock we had collected around the edges and it has worked well with a little tweeking as the years have passed and we've learned from our mistakes (ie. need for more oxygenation.)

Unfortunately, the increased water movement hasn't been enjoyed by the lotus. I think it may have given up the ghost last year.

Another view, showing more of the fish pool. Don't know why the picture is sideways. When I view it in Picasa2 it is upright. Anyone know how to turn them in Dave's Garden Image Browser?

This should come through upright....

Welcome baagrant! I absolutely LOVE what you have done with your pond...it is beautiful!
Thanks also for the explanation of how you made the horizontal spray!
Michelle:)

A different view, it looks better when more of the flowers wake up from their winter's nap.

And here is the overflow down to the submerged pump and on to the ditch if necessary.