Portable plastered polystyrene pond projects

Ozymandias said:

wow really not even tilapia?

Click to expand...

Nope and we can't even farm trout, even though the rivers are full of them and we have the perfect climate to farm them.

Here's a little vertical planter/patio pond I made from the same materials as the second pond-

I'm experimenting with open cell polyurethane foam as a growing medium. It seems to hold the perfect mix of air and water for growing plants. I got the idea from a piece of foam laying around outside that was growing mosses and weeds. This is a closeup of the foam with the pump running-

I'm going to leave it running around the clock for a few weeks, to flush out gasses that are present in the new foam.
I'm going to plant basil, coriander, parsley, chives, and fancy lettuce seeds into the foam and see what happens. I want every square cm of foam covered in plants. I don't know what fish I'll put in there, maybe young goldfish before they go into the bigger ponds?

I made this as a warm up before making the much more complex frog enclosure that I'm working on here-http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=223467
I'll be starting up again with that build soon.

WeedCali said:

thats really cool! the foam will act as a great surface for beneficial backteria to colinize as well. looks like a lot of oxygen to help seed it too.

and where did you get the open cell foam?

Click to expand...

I got the foam from a plastics store, its the stuff used for swabs and cheap cushions. You just have to make sure it doesn't have any flame retardant and/or anti mold chemicals in it. Although it still has nasty stuff in it from it manufacture than needs flushing out before growing anything in it.
It should work as a pretty effective filter, especially once the plants grow in. I just wonder if it would be ok to have the pump on a timer? could it cause big ph swings and depleted o2 levels?

pbeemer said:

Wow! This and your Tree-root making thread have forced me to totally revise my concept for a backyard pond.

Have you considered saving yourself a step by blending the mortar for the inside surfaces of the pond with the polymer / asphalt emulsion product, as suggested in their product data sheet? I would expect that at the heavy emulsion load they suggest the mechanical strength would be down a lot, but then the load is really being carried byt the steel and the outside reinforced cement. (a pond liner isn't really load-bearing either.)

re: your local fish stocking issue, would they allow you to have a largish, purely decorative pond, stocked only with local fish (trout, perhaps?), the population of which you must occasionally thin (around barbecue time) just to keep the pond healthy?

Click to expand...

I didn't realise that the pond paint could be mixed with the mortar. I will have to look into it. For the next one I might make it with a thin coat of fibre reinforced mortar all over, then do a thin coat of the blended mortar and polymer below the waterline, and a thin coat of hypertufa for above the waterline.

btw the larger ponds aren't purely decorative, I'm going to plump them into irrigation systems to water vegetable gardens with.
It would be very nice to be able to incorporate trout into a big system, but I would have to move to Aussie to do that legally

Pretty much. The pump for my other vertical garden is currently only running for one minute every hour. That pond has another smaller pump running 24/7 into a couple of bio-filters though.
If I had the smaller foam one running15 minutes per hour, do you think that would be enough filtration and oxygenation?

Ok I'll do a no-fish cycle with the pump on for 15 minutes per hour and see how the ammonia and nitrites go down.

Also the wildlife laws are insane alright. The two creatures that I would like to own more than any other- peacock mantis shrimp and dart frogs aren't aloud either:irked: