Vacation with Pond
Aug. 10th, 2011 11:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marina_bonomiI and hubby have been on vacation since the first of August, and are enjoying ourselves at home (the most relaxing holidays, in my opinion, we do live in a place people come from all over to visit, after all).
We are tackling a a few chores which needed doing and one of these is a sort of 'remodeling project'.
We have had for years a rock garden with two small ponds, one with lotuses and some goldfish, the others with water lilies, but the water lilies had been growing like mad and the pond is chocked, while in the other more and more soil set down every year and the fish had less and less depth to move in, besides we discovered some weeks ago that a lot of goldfish were missing without a trace, we suspect an heron we had glimpsed some time ago.
In short, it was high time to do something with both ponds, we started with the lotus one: the lotuses had to be taken out, and the mud dig up.
We set the lotuses in a plastic tub, the live roots will be planted in a few vases and put in the second pond once that's been dig out again.
Here's the tub
Since the lotuses will stay there a while and we don't want the tub to become a mosquito nursery, we bought a pair of mosquitofish (Gambusia Affinis). Here they are:
This is an adult pair, the female (the bigger one) was put in the tub, the male in a small basin connecting the two ponds. This way we'll have more mosquito control and the mosquitofish won't be able to reproduce until they are back together in the second pond (the species is very prolific).
There had been a lot of cases in which mosquitofish have supplanted indigenous species, here they won't be a problem since our ponds are artificial and not connected to natural waterways. They will share the second pond with the lotuses, while the goldfish will remain in the first, bigger pond.
About twenty years ago my parents came home from the supermarket with 3 goldfish, it was the opening anniversary, I think, and the goldfish were being gifted to clients (don't get me started on that ), anyway, the fish were healthy, lived and multiplied, in recent years there were around 25 including the original ones which had reached about 20 centimeters in lenght.
Now there are just four left, so I decided to introduce some new blood, yesterday we bought two more goldfish, a sarasa comet and a yellow, here they are in their quarantine tub
They are quarantined together since they were in the same tank in the shop to start with. Quarantine is always recommended when introducing new fish, but these look healthy and behave normally (they swim well, don't scratch themselves, are curious and always hungry, all in all typical goldfish behaviour).
Here's the pond immediately after we dug out quite a lot of mud (the dephth has doubled now)
There's still a lot of work to do, we'll put in some tiles in such a way that the fish could hide under them, plant new oxigen-giving and water filtering plants (definitely one Water Hyacint, again it cannot spread elsewhere and it's a great depurator), put in a couple of waterlilies (potted, so that they'll stay confined) and introduce the new fish (plus another couple, a pair of Shubunkin I'm going to choose tomorrow).
I'm enjoying the work and the research, and I'm learning a lot about the common goldfish, a species full of surprises. Expect more posts on this 'remodeling', you have been warned...
We are tackling a a few chores which needed doing and one of these is a sort of 'remodeling project'.
We have had for years a rock garden with two small ponds, one with lotuses and some goldfish, the others with water lilies, but the water lilies had been growing like mad and the pond is chocked, while in the other more and more soil set down every year and the fish had less and less depth to move in, besides we discovered some weeks ago that a lot of goldfish were missing without a trace, we suspect an heron we had glimpsed some time ago.
In short, it was high time to do something with both ponds, we started with the lotus one: the lotuses had to be taken out, and the mud dig up.
We set the lotuses in a plastic tub, the live roots will be planted in a few vases and put in the second pond once that's been dig out again.
Here's the tub
Since the lotuses will stay there a while and we don't want the tub to become a mosquito nursery, we bought a pair of mosquitofish (Gambusia Affinis). Here they are:
This is an adult pair, the female (the bigger one) was put in the tub, the male in a small basin connecting the two ponds. This way we'll have more mosquito control and the mosquitofish won't be able to reproduce until they are back together in the second pond (the species is very prolific).
There had been a lot of cases in which mosquitofish have supplanted indigenous species, here they won't be a problem since our ponds are artificial and not connected to natural waterways. They will share the second pond with the lotuses, while the goldfish will remain in the first, bigger pond.
About twenty years ago my parents came home from the supermarket with 3 goldfish, it was the opening anniversary, I think, and the goldfish were being gifted to clients (don't get me started on that ), anyway, the fish were healthy, lived and multiplied, in recent years there were around 25 including the original ones which had reached about 20 centimeters in lenght.
Now there are just four left, so I decided to introduce some new blood, yesterday we bought two more goldfish, a sarasa comet and a yellow, here they are in their quarantine tub
They are quarantined together since they were in the same tank in the shop to start with. Quarantine is always recommended when introducing new fish, but these look healthy and behave normally (they swim well, don't scratch themselves, are curious and always hungry, all in all typical goldfish behaviour).
Here's the pond immediately after we dug out quite a lot of mud (the dephth has doubled now)
There's still a lot of work to do, we'll put in some tiles in such a way that the fish could hide under them, plant new oxigen-giving and water filtering plants (definitely one Water Hyacint, again it cannot spread elsewhere and it's a great depurator), put in a couple of waterlilies (potted, so that they'll stay confined) and introduce the new fish (plus another couple, a pair of Shubunkin I'm going to choose tomorrow).
I'm enjoying the work and the research, and I'm learning a lot about the common goldfish, a species full of surprises. Expect more posts on this 'remodeling', you have been warned...
