Emily's Pond Build Log

[Jennie Beth]

Hiya Emily,
If someone has already said this, I apologize...been off AC for awhile, and read only the last two pages of your pond log...

You are looking for media for water plants, right? I have used the aquatic soil, and it is great, so long as your pots never get tipped over. It gets EVERYWHERE, since it sticks to nothing, and if you are at all anal, the teeny bits of orangish rock scattered all over will make you nuts. My lilies, cattails and other plants are all potted in plain ol' yard dirt. I pick out the rocks and any sticks, leaves, weeds, etc, and pot them up like you would 'land' plants, and they have done wonderfully. I do push in an aquatic fertilizer tablet each spring, but that is it. Helps too, if you will have tall plants, to put a large rock or brick in the bottom of the pot for stability. My cattails seemed to tip over everytime the wind blew when I first put them in

How is your scarecrow working? I hated mine. It seemed to shoot the kids and pets just fine, and when the racoon came, it would just wait for the water to go by, and go back to eating my fish. It also is useless as soon as it gets cold outside. If you have it running and the weather gets cold enough to freeze, you have a frozen busted 50$ piece of plastic. And unfortunately, racoons still like fish when it is cold outside. At the old house, I ran an electric wire around the top of my fence, on the outside. Kept the racoon out, but didn't fry my own pets or kids. Here, I have the pond netted to discourage the herons that think I am running a sushi bar.

What size do you figure the holes are in your netting? Mine is 3/4 inch, I think. The cattails poke right thru, and I just cut holes for my other, fatter plants to come thru the netting. Means I have to replace the netting in the fall when the plants die back, but it works pretty well. Bear in mind though, that my pond is just 8' across, so not nearly the chore yours will be to net. I hated the look of netting, but hated more having my fishies munched, and after awhile, you don't even see it. I have been using garden netting rather than the stuff sold for ponds, because it seems to be much more sturdy.

ok, now I remember why I had to quit getting on here when I am supposed to be getting ready for work. Yikes!
Hope my novel is a little helpful
Jen
PS. Now I need to go back and get caught up on the rest of your build. Last time I looked, you were just lining it and getting ready to fill...

 

[rainbowcharmer]

Hi Jennie,

We have not actually set up the scarecrow. It just arrived on Saturday. I'm hoping it will work, but if not we'll try the net instead - just have to figure out how to go about that. What garden net are you talking about that is different than pond netting? Can you link me somewhere? The cat tail plants and horse tail plants will poke through, but the irises and the other one I bought (name escapes me at the moment) won't poke through the mesh I was looking at. So I guess I'd have to do what you're doing and cut holes. I just feel like that's going to be a lot of holes that would greatly diminish the stability of the net itself since they'll all be in a line around the edge of one side of the pond... It's about 8' wide by 15' long (ish) so it's a good sized area to cover. I'm tempted by the electric wire, but my yard is so big... we have about a half acre fenced in. What did you connect yours to? Something you'd use on a pasture? And how do you get in/out of the gates, or do you not have gates in your yard that you use? We have two - one on each side of the house - and both get used regularly...

Hmmm... Will keep thinking, but I'm hoping the scarecrow will do the trick. Once I get more plants going, i think that will help too since there is plenty of room for the fish to get down deep in the pond if they need to hide, but they just at the moment seem to be too stupid to do that?? How do you teach a fish?? LOL

Oh - also - do you have snails in your pond? I'm tempted to put pond snails in, but are they really "pond" snails?? Just wondering.

 

[Jennie Beth]

Hi Emily,
I'll have to ask my dad about the netting. He buys it in big rolls for netting his blueberries, and one year he ordered the wrong size, so I got it I am going out to his place this week, so I will see what I can find out.

Regarding the electric fence, I ran it from a basic electric fence charger like you'd use to keep cows in, along the fence on insulators. At the gate I had a handle kind of thing, available in a farm supply store, that allows you to disconnect the wire so you can use the gate. I will see if I can find a link here in a bit. I also ran the fence on a timer, so it was 'live' from about dusk until dawn, when the racoons were out and about, but not so much when the family was outside.

As far as teaching fishies to hide...I had the surface of my pond 90% covered in plants when I lost 4 of my 6 original fish. From the looks of it, the fish were hanging out under the lily pads, and the heron speared right thru the pads to the fish. I had all these puncture marks in the pads, like someone took a knife to them. They thought they were hiding just fine, but the heron got them anyway

I have some volunteer snails that I think came in on the plants, absolutely no idea what kind they are. Teeny little things, maybe the size of my thumbnail. I did have some 'japanese pond snails' in the old pond. About fist size, very dark shells. One became racoon food, and the other froze over the winter.

Link for electric fence gate handle:
http://www.farmsupplystore.com/departments/gates/heavy-duty-gate-handle

This is similar to the netting I have, but mine is about 14' wide and came on a 100' roll. Will see if I can find the actual brand I have...
http://www.gemplers.com/product/G51906/Plant-Netting-Black-All-purpose-7x100#TAB-REVIEWS
Jennifer

 

[rainbowcharmer]

Thanks Jen! I will probably look into the netting before looking to the electric fence. Since ours is chain link, I think running an electric fence would probably electrify the whole thing?? Or so I would assume anyhow. And i'm guessing that would pull a LOT of power if the wire across the top isn't getting enough? Or it just wouldn't travel far enough around the whole perimeter? I'm not an electrician so I don't know if that's accurate or not... just a guess on my part. What type of fencing do you have?

 

[Jennie Beth]

I had my hot wire on a chain link fence. There are plastic connectors that hold the wire about 4-6 inches from the fence so you don't charge the whole thing. You can get chargers for different distances, too. I think mine was for an acre. We ran it evenings year round and never saw a jump in our electric bill.

link for chain link fence insulator...not identical to what I used, but same purpose. I bought all my bits and pieces at the local hardware store.
http://www.farmsupplystore.com/departments/insulators/chainlink-extension-insulator

 

[rainbowcharmer]

So I'm curious. What would happen if I just put it directly on the fence at the corner of the house. Would it save me the hassle of running wire around the whole thing? i.e. would it all become live? Or would the metal fence posts that are cemented into the ground negate the electricity and ground it out? Certainly if I could just make the whole thing live overnight, that would work well. But if that's not a realistic possibility then I'll have to research the wire thing.

I still want to give the scarecrow a shot. I'm not sure what's eating the fish (if anything). I just know that there seem to be fewer fish in the pond, so my assumption is they have become dinner. Could also be that they died and got sucked into the filter. I haven't taken that apart to see. And with the algae bloom going on, it's hard to tell who is in the pond and who isn't. Once that clears up hopefully I'll have more difinitive answers. I also think my neighbor's cat is partly to blame, and odds are the scarecrow will do the job with him. It will also convince my lab that wading into the pond for a drink is not OK. She doesn't seem to get that yet. But she's afraid of being sprayed with the hose, so the scarecrow should break her of that habit relatively easily.

 

[pbeemer]

as long as the insulators keep the hot wire from contacting the chain link, the charger doesn't use much power because it takes almost zero current to charge the wire. they normally have an output capacitor (to give the target a controlled jolt) and a load resistor to limit current in case the wire does touch the chain link. either way, not a lot of power, just a high voltage

 

[Jennie Beth]

If you run juice directly to the fence, it will go down into the ground and that's it. It won't travel along the whole fence. Not sure, but I think it would draw a tremendous amt of power, too. With the wire, you are sending just a small pulse along a narrow pathway.

 

[rainbowcharmer]

Gotcha. Well I'm gonna give the scarecrow a try first, and possibly a net second. And if I still need help, I'll try the electric fence thing as a last measure. That will be a more expensive endeavor, so I'll save that for last since my budget is a bit tight lately.

 

[rainbowcharmer]

Tadpoles and Minnow fry!!! I have tadpoles and minnow fry!! Woohoo!!

The pond is clearing up and I can see that some of my minnows have gotten large! They are definitely happy. And the cloud of minnow fry says the same. The tadpoles are either toads or tree frogs. Not sure which. But there's a bunch of them too.

Yay!