Show me your pond!

Hopefully your tadpoles will start to eat the algae.

So, the tadpoles 😬

Despite all sorts of attempts to protect them from the late frosts, interfering with nature and all that, I’d overlooked the fact I have 9, inch-long, fish of unknown origin.

Apparently fish like tadpoles.

It was a massacre.

However I’ve spotted two tadpoles today that are now too large to be eaten by the sodding fish. Survival of the fattest.

I also have dozens (if not hundreds) of snails, which are fascinating in their own way – especially when they’re floating about on the top of the water, upside down. Weirdos.

8 frogs
9 fish
circa 100 snails
2 tadpoles
Thousands of really weird insect things that come out at night.

And all I did want put some water and plants in a hole. It’s brilliant, can’t recommend it enough.

One of the two lone survivors:

One of the sharks (God knows what they actually are)

One of the hedonistic snails, getting high on algae.

That’s nothing.

I was out with my nephew looking at my parents pond. It was like the Marsh scene in lord if the rings all these massive dead frogs floating beneath the surface.

Apparently it can all get a bit gangbangy and so many boyfrogs latch on the female drowns! And the dark part? Some of the males don’t even realise and were still hanging on… Explain that to a 5 year old.

Tadpoles in my pond are eating me out of pond and home…..
We have have to feed them cucumber on the odd
days it’s like watching orcas on a feeding frenzy. Some are just getting back legs so they look like Deadpool.
and I’ve got ram’s horn snails in eating alge.
No fish allowed.
And for the first time little outer skeletons of damson fly or caddis fly left on the pond plants oddly as I redid my pond last summer so not sure where they came from.
So far a success. Will just have keep an eye on the crow population when the frogs get bigger

If you build it, nature will come. :0)

https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/562689045

Nature’s a bitch.

Just fished a dead fledgling/bird teenager out of the pond. Think it was a house sparrow.

God knows how it drowned, possibly landed without anything to stand on, but my soft-**** mode is fully engaged – really sad.

Frogs don’t give a shit, obviously.

Upsetting update warning:

And tonight, after being away for a few days, I’ve had to scoop a dying frog out of the pond.

No idea what’s caused it, but after taking it out of the pond (floating nearly lifelessly) and putting in a safe, damp and dark, place and watching over the bloody thing to make sure neighbour’s cats didn’t get it- it’s gone and died.

Stupid really,but I’m quite gutted. I was watering the whole area before I went away as growing wildflowers around the pond and didn’t want them to die in the impending heatwave whilst I was away. Now wondering if I upset the chemical balance with too much tap water, although the other frogs appear fine.

Ponds – wonderful givers and sustainers of life or, seemingly, deathpools”

*Comment not sanctioned by Ryan Reynolds.

Frogs can drown, I have to extract one a year out of our pond. We have lots of frogs in the garden which given where we live is odd (right up on the moors) but they live in the flower beds not the pond.

So a more cheerful update; pond’s been in for just over a year and it’s getting a ‘natural’ look at last. You can kind of tell where it gets enough sun for flowers, so more rotten logs etc needed to fill the gaps. Battling the stringy algae, but that’s my fault for not fishing the leaves out enough.

I still have lots of frogs, **** knows how many fish (and they keep growing in size and having babies, despite me not feeding them) and the hedonistic snails. Everything is becoming a little bit harder to spot, and I’ve not seen the tadpoles since they morphed into frogs (3 made it that I last saw) but that’s fine – I guess they probably prefer it that way.

Also, the once a year pond lily flower has just opened today.

Easily one of the best things I’ve done; lovely to sit there of an evening and watch the bees snorting pollen and pond life, well, just being weird.

Beautiful.

Our native water lily (small yellow flowers) produced a couple of blooms last year. This year it’s kept producing many flowers and for weeks on end.

The Hedgehog has been drinking from our pond, leaving its calling card, birds use it as a bath, many new baby pond skaters and baby frogs all around the garden, but so far not a single damsel fly and I think the snails are hiding. At least 40 – 100 pond skaters. Nature is wonderful.

That’s probably the best bit actually – the amount of birds that use the pond. Just sip from or bathe in.

Looking out and seeing a bunch of house sparrows, especially the youngsters, losing their shit in the shallow end on hot days is fantastic.

Not had a hot day for about month now though, mind you 🤔

WOO-HOO!

All that bloody trouble I went to trying to protect the sodding tadpoles from the frost, then watching them get eaten by the effin’ fish (that I never put in) and finally seeing three tadpoles that were too big for the fish to eat….

..look what I’ve just spotted!

I’m chuffed to bits.

It’s an unglamorous location the little bleeder decided to pose in, so have another wildflower pic (Wilko, £3 for a box – that covered this area – and don’t listen to what the internet tells you about they must have low nutrient soil etc; for these it was just MP compost, raked, sowed and regularly watered)

blanket weed….any tips??
horrible stuff that I want rid of!

@jimfrandisco add a bale of barley straw. Sink it into your pond and let it sort of rot down. Worked wonders on mine. You can get small bales for little ponds.

brilliant – thanks @stwhannah – had heard rumours about that, but assumed it was for big ponds only. Will look into it.

The problem with wildflower (even mini) meadows is that they may not look as good as that next year. You’ll definitely need to take the nutrients out of the soil and maybe re plant or re seed.

Cute little fog. I was weeding our strawberry patch and a teeny froglet jumped out of the leaves so high, it hit my leg, gave me a wee fright, but so good to know it’s in there eating the mini slugs, snails and pests.

Bit late this year again but 2 frogs where doing the wild thing on my path the other day and now we have a small amount of spawn so YAY .

How are your ponds

I was out at 3am the other morning (don’t ask) and I heard some lone frog making his mating call. Fingers crossed!

…and his mating call appears to have worked!

Bizarrely, last year’s spawn were also after a Saturday night.

Yay.
my pond if full to the brim with spawn now, they have been having a good time of it by the looks of it.
We have nesting birds too a bit of light releif in a crappy March.
Just need a hedge pig to visit and thats me happy.

I Miss the ponds my parents had when I was growing up, remember helping to build them.

I remember them freezing over in winter and will always remember when one of our dogs was standing on the frozen pond then suddenly, the ice breaking and watching her go through the ice with a big yelp and then jumping out and standing at the pond barking at it as if it was the ponds fault.

Does anyone else suffer from something eating their frogs?

We had a wonderful population of frogs and since last year they’ve all been killed. Lost the final female last night. 😔

Over 50 frogs killed (that we’ve found) same pattern every time, happens overnight and they/it only eats the heads.

Any ideas? We’re in town so realistically it can only be foxes or cats. Can’t be herons as it happens overnight and I presume they would actually eat them.

going to net the pond and see if I can save the last few frogs.

Mine is a seething mass of frog-sex, followed by post-coital sunbathing.

There is a local cat whose kink is apparently watching them, and maybe eating a few. Thinking about fitting a hinged board at the edge which drops it into the filth if it gets too close.

Things have kicked off this week. Lots of shagging frogs and maybe a dozen newts.

@pictonroad
That can only be cats I would say a heron would just take the lot.
And mogli has newts I’m not jealous at all 🙂

After a bit of pond TLC a few weeks ago (mainly pulling out lots of algae and leaves) and sorting out the water level, I thought it was pretty dead in there. I was pleasantly surprised then when I was having a tidy up yesterday and saw three frogs out and about! Closer inspection revealed quite a lot of insect action, a load of tiny snails, some tiny shrimpy jobbies and some wiggly larvae things. The few plants I managed to pick up when I dug it last year are doing well, so it’s given me a bit of a nudge to get a bit more planting done around it and keep on top of the leaf fall a bit more regularly to keep it clean. Waiting for a sunny afternoon to try to get some pics.

I’ve neglected my pond due to the arrival of daughter no. 2, but looking to get it back on track.

I’ve got two main problems, 1 the water is green, 2 there is a tonne of sludge so I have to keep taking the filter to bits and hosing out the foam every 2-3 days.

UV bulb in the filter had failed so I replaced that.

Are any of the anti-greenwater or anti-sludge products worth using? I’ve looked through quite a lot on Amazon and they all seem to have a good chunk of people saying they don’t work.

We’ve used barley straw to keep the algae under control. Won’t reduce the sludge though, so I raised the pump off the bottom of the pond so it wasn’t clogging up the filter.
I have been scooping some of the sludge out gradually by hand. Looks great now.

We’ve got far too much pond weed & algae!

We dug ours out in lockdown

Plenty of tadpoles though and a few frogs, we have a problem with crows dropping bits of scavenged food in to soften it up, like discarded KFC!

Anyway last month we had 3 dragonfly larvae crawl up and make the leap to their next stage

Kimbers – we have the same problem with a crow softening up stale bread. I have to dig the sodden mess out, but then the rat comes along and scoffs the bits left.

The tadpoles are turning nicely into froglets. The tadpoles seem to be eating anything and everything now, evening devouring water snails.
The barley straw has done its job and I can just keep clearing the weed by hand.
Hoping for some dragon flies or similar in the next few years.

Found hedgehog poo by the pond edge, very chuffed.

I have been inspired by this thread to put a tiny (very tiny) container pond in our small garden. The container was an old rectangular bucket from work that we used for applying PVA with a large roller. I’ve got some gravel and some rocks so there is an escape route for accidently swimmer. I’m going to fill it with water from the water butt. I was going to get a couple of oxygenating plants and stick them in too. Any suggestions? Hornwort? Needs to be readily available and, ideally, cheap.

You can actually buy the plants off eBay believe it or not. Cheap as chips

Good call.

multi21
Free Member

I’ve neglected my pond due to the arrival of daughter no. 2, but looking to get it back on track.

I’ve got two main problems, 1 the water is green, 2 there is a tonne of sludge so I have to keep taking the filter to bits and hosing out the foam every 2-3 days.

UV bulb in the filter had failed so I replaced that.

Are any of the anti-greenwater or anti-sludge products worth using? I’ve looked through quite a lot on Amazon and they all seem to have a good chunk of people saying they don’t work.

Just a quick followup, I used Tetra Algorem and it cleared the green water up a treat.

Need to fix all the other problems and remove the net from over the top, but at least we can see the fish now!

For reference, the depth where the filter is, is about 20-24 inches.

I was inspired by this thread myself. When I redid the garden I bought a very very small pre-made pond liner and have planted around it. Not much activity at the moment but it’s probably only been left to develop for maybe two months. We have put in a dwarf iris and a dwarf reed, forget-me-not, dwarf lily, three bunches of oxygenators and a horse tail. Apparently, dragonflies may use the iris to lay eggs.

It is still quite fascinating to see the bug population develop but nothing glamorous yet.

Sadly my pond seems to be a death trap for baby sparrows. I’m guessing they fall in and get too wet and cold to be able to fly away and get fed. At least the magpies are thriving.

While we are on the subject what’s a no chemical way of getting rid of duck weed the more you pull it out the faster it grows.

Its all getting a bit low … deep part just behind the ship.

Hey all

I actually bookmarked this thread a couple of weeks ago and forgot to come back and seek the collective wisdom of STW.

To be honest I was completely blown away by how clear some of your ponds are!

We moved in to a house a couple of years ago now, most of the focus has been inside the house but we’ve turned our attention to the garden more this year.

The previous owners had two ponds, we emptied and filled one pond and retained the other.

Last year we emptied, cleaned and re-filled the remaining pond but we can’t seem to keep the water clear all we have is a thick green water.

So far we have:
– Installed a water blade to oxygenate (runs for an hour or so a day)
– We’ve added water lilies and other plants in.
– Earlier this summer we added a UV filter which is on the same timer as the water blade (so ran for an hour or so each day).

Last week I’ve set up the UV filter to run seperately and have had this running for a week 24/7, at the moment I’ve noticed very little improvement in the water clarity.

What would be your next steps?