Hi, Hi

Hi, I'm casualfishkeeper, I've been keeping tropical community fish for a while now. I used to have 6 different tropical tanks but now I've reduced to 1. I want to now focus on creating a pond. I've never kept coldwater or pond fish. I'd like a small pond with a few small fish (no goldfish or koi or any other plant-eaters) and lots of colorful plants as well as some edibles. I'm currently looking at having water lilies, blue flag iris, yellow flag iris, watercress and some large reeds. I've done a large amount of research, mainly using Robyn's site and other related sites, as Robyn's site is full of great pond information.

Welcome to the forum!

I suggest some native fish for your pond. If you're in the US, rosy red minnows are the easiest to find for sale. Other native fish can be found at bait shops or through people who keep native fish.

Also, yellow flag iris is pretty invasive (grows like mad) so keep that in mind. Water celery is another edible plant.

I have a list of edible pond plants at
http://www.fishpondinfo.com/plants/plant3.htm#eat

Hi Robyn
Weare going to add a plant filter into our filtration system next years so I looked at your link with great interest.
Sadly it appears your link to the UK website seems no no longer exist
rgrds
broxandval

Yes, I am from the US, Connecticut, to be exact. So, I do get quite cold winters here.

I'm going to have a look for rosy reds. I went on your pages about them on your website, and it was very informative. I'm really liking the sound of rosy reds as they appear to fit the bill of plant-friendly, easy to keep, very safe with plants, cheap, not as fond of pooping as goldfish/koi (and so not fouling my edible plants too badly) and attractive.

I'll definitely look out for other native fish too, do you have any particular recommendations?

Water celery sounds great, I'm definitely going to get some of that for my pond.

I liked the look of the yellow flag iris when I looked around the garden center. It was very brightly colored, and I definitely would like it in my pond. How often will I have to cut it back to stop it causing too much trouble?

Thanks for the link, it has given me lots of good ideas about edibles. I had no idea you could eat duckweed! That sounds like a great thing should I ever get a duckweed infestation (which I hear is likely in new ponds).

Also, after reading Robyn's article two weeks ago, I decided to fill an old fountain back up again and throw in some old watercress stems and leaves that were starting to droop and would otherwise be through away. I totally forgot about them until I read this topic, and I just went out and checked and found the stems have twisted and sprouted out of the water vigorously, and sprouted lots of roots underwater!

Congrats on your growing watercress!

If you want to learn about fish native to your state, it's best to talk to people there. Check out this forum:
http://forum.nanfa.org/
Sometimes people on there can get you some native fish or steer you in the right direction. Also, check out your local bait shops as they often have shiners or dace.

The invasiveness of the yellow flag iris is concentrated in its very strong roots and base. If it's potted, and the plant is not allowed to spend too much time jumped out of the pot (or in a few cases, it has broken the pots or bored out of them), then it can easily be controlled. Here is a link to one of the repottings of my yellow flag iris so you can see what an ordeal it is to repot:
http://www.fishpondinfo.com/myfish/labor.htm

The watercress is doing very well now! I'm going to move it to the pond once I get that set up.

Thanks for the link, I'm going to make an account on the forum and ask my native fish related questions there. I'll be sure to check out my bait shops, there's not that many in my town, but I think I know one a bit further away.

Your iris link was also very helpful. I'll try potting the irises, as I don't want to deal with it if it's in the ground.

Finally I'd like to finish up by showing you a photo of my watercress (bad quality because I took it on my iPhone not a proper camera).



You should be able to see some of the roots that have sprouted in that photo (there's a couple of dying watercress leaves too, but I'm going to leave them there to decompose, as I don't have anything else in the fountain. Luckily most of the stems I put in were successful.)
The fountain is quite stagnant but I top up the water every day and they seem to be fine with that. It's also raining heavily recently so that should help them too.

A lot has changed! The tub pond is now overflowing heavily with huge amounts of watercress and the water and sides are now free of green, brown and red algae, and the detritus has disappeared for the most part too. However, I have noticed mosquito larvae living in there. This tub is too small to house fish of any species, or anything else with the exception of microlife.

Will Daphnia or any other kind of microlife either predate, parasitize or outcompete the larvae?
I can't wait until I get a pond (or multiple ) but it will still be a while to go before that happens.
I will introduce some Daphnia to the tub anyway and see how it goes.
The idea of Daphnia keeping as pets has given me a great idea for a micro fish tank too!

I'm glad things are going well. Daphnia won't bother mosquito larvae but they're neat in their own right. They filter algae from the water. You can buy a Microbe-Lift product with Bt in a liquid form, or you can buy mosquito dunks or bits (which make a mess but also work) to kill the larvae when they molt. See http://www.fishpondinfo.com/mosquito.htm for more on mosquito control and other things that may help reduce mosquitoes (like heavy plant cover, moving water, and dragonflies).

Good luck!

Hi

The tub area where the watercress is growing has frozen in an awkward way!
There is a light layer of snow on top, followed by a thin layer of ice, then a layer of water, and then the whole of the bottom is frozen with a huge thick layer of ice! I suspect a lot of the plants' roots will have frozen and they may well die, but some of the smaller plants are emerging above the thick layer of ice perfectly fine! All the larger ones that were originally trailing out have died. There appears to be a lot of both dead and living plant material in the water, and even more within the ice below!
I have added some warmer water to the pond in hope of melting the thick layer of ice a little, but it seems to have little effect and I have to top it up every few hours otherwise the thick layer of ice will grow back to it's original size, and the thin layer will form again!

I heard watercress will survive as long as there are some roots or stems that have survived the ice. Is this true?

It's not surprising that it's basically all frozen over since it's just a fountain, like a small tub pond, right? How many gallons is it? The reason you have ice all on the bottom is because it's above ground so the sides get cold as well as the top. Without a heater, it will soon completely freeze. The watercress leaves that freeze will die right away. The roots can take a light freeze but probably not the solid freezing that you're getting. Did your watercress flower? If so, the seeds might survive freezing but I'm not sure. Otherwise, you'll most likely have to get some new watercress in the spring. Once the pond thaws out, I would just remove all the dead plant material.

I just top off my tub ponds in the winter as needed and don't worry about them until they thaw. Then, they are yucky and stinky so they get a 100% cleaning. My 20 gallon tub pond is above ground and freezes solid some years; the yellow flag iris in there survives. The 50 gallon tub pond is in the ground and doesn't freeze solid so that snails do overwinter in there but not much else.

Did you have any animals in the fountain? Did you set up another pond with the iris and rosy reds that you were talking about?

No, the proper pond with the flowers and fish won't be ready for a while. This pond had about 5 gallons so was very small. It's starting to melt off now and I can see a lot of watercress stems and leaves that have died, but also a lot that appear to have survived. There are lots of roots but I am not sure whether they are dead or alive. I don't think mine flowered. I'll buy a new batch in the spring anyway to supplement the survivors if there are any. There were a few Daphnia I introduced but all but a very small number have died, and the ones left are very young Daphnia. I hope some eggs have survived so more hatch. There is going to be more snow and ice soon. In Spring I'll try to 100% clean it as even now it looks quite messy.

I'm going to attempt setting up a bigger tub soon, perhaps one that's around 20-30 gals in size. This one too will have the sides exposed but will have a pump to deter mosquitoes (I rarely get a lot anyway though, so I probably won't need dunks.) It's not going to have a filter but I'm planning to add a lot of plants and have it naturally filtered. I'm looking at putting some elodea in as well as watercress and perhaps some hornwort and parrot's feather. The bottom will be a thin layer of sand. I'm hoping to add some small creatures like daphnia and cyclops at first and then maybe add a couple of ghost shrimp if that goes well. The aquatic plants will almost certainly come with a couple of physa snails too (these are very common over here). For this tub I will try and get one that has clear sides so I can see the shrimp and snails.