|
Are outdoor ponds on-topic for this thread? I moved into my new house a month ago, and there is a fish pond in the back garden. The fish were left behind by the previous owners, who assured me that they are very low maintenance. I don't really know anything at all about taking care of them; I just go and throw some food in every so often (I am aware that their metabolism is dependent on temperature and that it is bad to have uneaten food floating around in there). I'm worried that one of them might have some sort of infection because there is a patch of white fluff visible on its side. I will try to get a picture later. It's not obviously in any sort of distress; its behaviour is the same as its companions from what I've observed. I'm also not sure if there is too much plant material in the pond.
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2016 14:46
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 09:20 |
|
|
Thank you for your detailed and informative post. I live in the UK (specifically, south Yorkshire). It's been mild the past couple of weeks, anywhere from 8 to 15 Celsius during the day I would say. They would eat a very little food if i threw it in even when it was a bit colder a few weeks ago. There is a pump, which I understand is significant in some way to the water quality. The pump is switched on 24 hours a day. It is working correctly as far as I am able to tell, but I am not very well-informed. The water is clear and does not smell. I don't add new water or take special steps to drain the water, though of course it must drain to somewhere when it rains. The previous owners didn't mention ever adding water or treating the water in any way. I would treat the water if it were called for and I could identify what treatment was required. I will look into pond testing kits. Here is a photo showing the whole pond. You can see most of the fish. The largest fish (grey, about twice as long as the second largest - I don't know what variety of fish any of them are) was lurking at the back and isn't visible.  Here are a couple of photos in which you can see the fish I am worried about :  
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2016 22:56
|
|
|
I had been assuming that if there wasn't any food left floating in the pond after a while, it meant that I wasn't overfeeding. As you both advise it's probably too cold for them to eat much, I will cut back on the amount of food I throw in.Stoca Zola posted:That looks like a nice big pond, not overcrowded at all, and the waterfall where the water is pumped back in should have a nice aerating effect. Being completely set in the ground like that will help a bit against the chill but depending on how deep it is it might still be too cold. Does sound like it is still too cold to feed them yet. It does look like you've got some algae in there too unless the dark green blankety stuff is some other fine leafed pond plant. In my understanding it's harder to get rid of algae in colder climates as the usual remedies like barley straw or other microbial controls need enough warmth to be able to function so you might be stuck with manually pulling it out if it gets too overgrown. Well, if it's a tumour then at least it's not something that will affect the other fish. There is pump stuff to the side of the pond, I should have mentioned it. You can see it here:   If you wanted to see the bigger one, it was more active today so here you go:  
|
|
#
¿
Mar 22, 2016 22:40
|
|
|
CrazyLittle posted:Yup the filter is part of that pump assembly. You should be able to open the larger compartment and see the filter media. It's a good idea to rinse out the sponge periodically. Also that hard black tube inline with the pump hoses is probably a UV clarifier, and the bulbs on those need to be replaced every year or two. They're used to control algae growth. I would put the big one at about 35-40cm long and the others are all about 12-15cm.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 23, 2016 21:54
|
|
|
Hi, I know this is a thread about tanks/aquariums but there doesn't seem to be a thread about ponds unless I missed it. I have a small fish pond in the garden (was there when I bought the house and I decided to keep it) and I was wondering if there is anything I can do to give tadpoles a better chance at survival. Every year frogspawn gets laid in the pond, and most years as far as I know my fish eat all the tadpoles the first chance they get! There's frogspawn in there now that afaik was laid a week or so ago and whenever I go out to throw some food in at the moment, my biggest fish is hovering near it looking at it with obvious interest. Last year I tried scooping some of the frogspawn into a bucket. I filled the bucket with water from the pond and placed it on a shelf that runs around the edge of the pond, with the idea being that this would allow it to keep to the temperature of the pond water (I don't know how effective this was at keeping the temperature the same, since the bucket water was near the surface). I cycled water between the bucket and the pond water every so often by scooping it out and in. The process of transferring frogspawn to the bucket probably destroyed some of it, but I got quite a few tadpoles swimming about in the bucket at the start of the summer. but the number dwindled over time. I have no idea whether that's because the tadpoles were leaving the bucket (the water level was at the lip of the bucket), or because they were eating each other. I have no idea how many of the tadpoles survived, if any. Other years I have found tadpoles in the filter system (probably passed through the pump when they were quite small) and fished them out and returned them to the pond. But I suspect that just led to them being eaten by the fish.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 4, 2021 12:54
|
|
|
Enos Cabell posted:This gets my vote, depending on the size of your pond you can get a pre-made breeding box enclosure like this I had thought of the mesh fence idea before but couldn't figure out how I would put up a fence and keep it tight to the edges of the pond without damaging the lining. The idea of a complete mesh box hadn't occurred to me. I'm not very good with my hands so a pre-made one like that might be just what I need. I think the idea of a nursery tank for tadpoles is a bit beyond what I would be willing to commit to.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 4, 2021 15:55
|
|
|
I got off my rear end and put a tadpole nursery in at the edge of my pond as suggested. Pics below.  
|
|
#
¿
Apr 12, 2021 19:25
|
|
|
Schwack posted:That's awesome! My dad and I hatched tadpoles in a bucket with an airstone when I was a kid. They're so much fun to watch develop. Maybe I missed it, but any idea what kind of frog they'll become? I know very little. Actually I am sadly pretty ignorant of the biology of just about everything in the pond. I saw one frog on a couple of occasions this year. On one occasion it was at the bottom of the pond. On the other it was on the shelf around the edge of the pond and it dived to the bottom when I approached. I couldn't tell you what species of frog it was because I don't know frogs. I don't believe there are any frogs that permanently make my pond their home, because I never see any other than around springtime. So the frogspawn is from a species that roams to lay eggs. I would guess it's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_frog just because I don't know any better
|
|
#
¿
Apr 13, 2021 10:29
|
|
|
Bad news re: the tadpole nursery. Went out today and it was sitting on its side in the middle of the pond. I thought it was well enough weighted down, but I guess it was more susceptible to wind than I thought. Or maybe something disturbed it? I don't know what would though. I'll have to try again next year. I did notice a couple of days ago that most of the eggs had disappeared and there were a lot of dead tadpoles littering the bottom of it. What do you think happened, were they killing each other? There shouldn't have been any water quality issue, because the water could circulate freely between the nursery and the rest of the pond.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 28, 2021 14:11
|
|
|
Bulky Bartokomous posted:Is it possible the nursery heated up at a rate faster than the circulation kept it cool? Kind of like a solar cover on a pool? Or maybe they normally go deeper to get out of the sun? This is possible. It was in a shallow area (there is a kind of shallow shelf that runs along part of the perimeter of the pond). And it would have been in the sun pretty much all day. Next year I'll position it at a different part of the shelf, to minimise the amount of time it spends in the sun. And weight it down better, or tether it somehow. Actually there's a couple of little basket things with plants in them, it could probably be tethered to those with cable ties.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 28, 2021 14:39
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 09:20 |
|
|
Axqu posted:If they were freshly-hatched: Are you positive they were dead, and not just stuck to the bottom of the basket/ sitting on the bottom absorbing yolk? Some species spend a bit of time after they hatch just sitting around (or stuck to something) reabsorbing their yolk. Do they prefer suspended algae or blanketweed? or does it depend on species? It's trivial for me to fish blanketweed out of the pond and give it to them - I'm always having to remove it.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 28, 2021 19:34
|
|