TalYWaun
Active Member
The concept is stolen from another of my favourite sites, but thought it might be interesting to play it here.
Last weekend I performed the yearly maintenance on my pond. This involves setting up a large paddling pool and using the pond pump to move the water from the pond into the pool. When the water level gets low I catch the fish and transfer them into the pool. Normally this takes some time as I chase them around the pond with a net. Surprisingly this year they were quite easy to catch and nowhere near as fleet of fin as usual, which I guessed was due to the water still being quite cold.
Once the fish are out it’s time to remove all the plants, rocks and features and hoover up all the old leaves, mud, etc that has settled on bottom. Luckily, as I live on a hill the pond is on the patio about 6” above the lawn so I use a pipe and let the siphon effect to do the work. Once almost all the water is out I move all the stones up the slope towards the waterfall and get to work with the pressure washer to give the stones a bit of a clean. In the deep area of the pond I have a couple of large slabs supported on bricks that the fish can go to hide. At night they line up on the slope presumably using the flow from the waterfall to wash the water over their gills. Unfortunately this also means they tend to push the stones down the slope which had obstructed the entrance to their home so that my two big fish couldn’t get under there. Lesson learned I put a bit of a retaining wall at the bottom of the slope to stop that happening again and made their home a bit taller.
So with the main job over its time to run the underwater lighting cables and the water pump pipe for the pump which is at the opposite side of the pond to the waterfall. Then spread the nice clean stones out and cover the cables and pipe and rebuild the fishes ‘home’. Using the siphon again I let that move the water from the pool back into the pond. And return the fish and plants back into their nice clean pond.
When I clean the stones I also pressure wash the statue and all the other bits, so I get to check out everything quite closely. A few days after, I noticed a toad swimming around in the pond. There used to be a big one that lived in the bottom of the statue (where there is another pump) but I haven’t seen it in a few years and so it was nice that a new one had moved in. A few nights later I saw the toad swimming around and then saw another one, so with any luck I could have family of toads in there soon. This year I will put all the spawn into a net. When that happened a few years ago I didn’t, and all the tadpoles slowly disappeared as I guess the fish (or the main pump) ate them. The only slight problem is how noisy even a little toad can be when I am trying to get to sleep, but I think I can live with that and for a while that took my mind off corona virus.
Here are my fishes having breakfast in their nice clean home. OK, it’s not big, and it’s not clever. But so what, you got somewhere else you need to be?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1giDMA7HEJCs0lhkZGskygyY0sj5JgsZu/view?usp=sharing
Last weekend I performed the yearly maintenance on my pond. This involves setting up a large paddling pool and using the pond pump to move the water from the pond into the pool. When the water level gets low I catch the fish and transfer them into the pool. Normally this takes some time as I chase them around the pond with a net. Surprisingly this year they were quite easy to catch and nowhere near as fleet of fin as usual, which I guessed was due to the water still being quite cold.
Once the fish are out it’s time to remove all the plants, rocks and features and hoover up all the old leaves, mud, etc that has settled on bottom. Luckily, as I live on a hill the pond is on the patio about 6” above the lawn so I use a pipe and let the siphon effect to do the work. Once almost all the water is out I move all the stones up the slope towards the waterfall and get to work with the pressure washer to give the stones a bit of a clean. In the deep area of the pond I have a couple of large slabs supported on bricks that the fish can go to hide. At night they line up on the slope presumably using the flow from the waterfall to wash the water over their gills. Unfortunately this also means they tend to push the stones down the slope which had obstructed the entrance to their home so that my two big fish couldn’t get under there. Lesson learned I put a bit of a retaining wall at the bottom of the slope to stop that happening again and made their home a bit taller.
So with the main job over its time to run the underwater lighting cables and the water pump pipe for the pump which is at the opposite side of the pond to the waterfall. Then spread the nice clean stones out and cover the cables and pipe and rebuild the fishes ‘home’. Using the siphon again I let that move the water from the pool back into the pond. And return the fish and plants back into their nice clean pond.
When I clean the stones I also pressure wash the statue and all the other bits, so I get to check out everything quite closely. A few days after, I noticed a toad swimming around in the pond. There used to be a big one that lived in the bottom of the statue (where there is another pump) but I haven’t seen it in a few years and so it was nice that a new one had moved in. A few nights later I saw the toad swimming around and then saw another one, so with any luck I could have family of toads in there soon. This year I will put all the spawn into a net. When that happened a few years ago I didn’t, and all the tadpoles slowly disappeared as I guess the fish (or the main pump) ate them. The only slight problem is how noisy even a little toad can be when I am trying to get to sleep, but I think I can live with that and for a while that took my mind off corona virus.
Here are my fishes having breakfast in their nice clean home. OK, it’s not big, and it’s not clever. But so what, you got somewhere else you need to be?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1giDMA7HEJCs0lhkZGskygyY0sj5JgsZu/view?usp=sharing
