Valor, the papyrus are pretty, but from what I read they cannot overwinter outside, and for now that's not something I'm up for dealing with. I am looking for more native species that will overwinter in/around the pond without needing to be brought in for the cold months. At this time I just have nowhere to put them in the house, and don't want to hassle with them.
I may do a few of the "grassy" plants around the edges of the pond just for depth, but haven't determined that yet either. I'll probably start researching this weekend and start a list of what I want to try to include, and then figure out what works for me. I have 3 pots that are either partially or almost fully submerged, so those will need bog plants I would imagine, and then I've got a few pots that are completely out of the water, and in those I'm going to have some things like phlox (and undecided what else yet). I just want some color in among the rocks, and the phlox will get me that. Plus it will spread over the side of the pots to help hide them. So I will be looking for other similarly shaped colorful plants too. But may just stick with all phlox and get a variety of colors. It's the aquatic plants and semi-aquatic plants that I'm just not as familiar with so those will require a little more research before I purchase anything.
Most of the local nurseries are not yet carrying any of their pond plants yet, so I'll either have to order online and ship things in or wait for them to get plants in stock. I'm also still having occasional deaths in my QT tanks with the minnows/goldies, so those are definitely not anywhere near ready to go into the pond. Plus after yesterday's rain, there's lots of mud back in the pond.
As for letting it settle, we tried that prior to putting the rocks in - we had a sunny week, so no rain, and no mud draining into the pond and even after a full week it was still the same orangish brown with no apparent settling of the dirt/silt/mud. I don't know what it is about clay but it just seem to stay free-floating...
There was still mud under the rocks that we didn't hose off prior to setting the rocks in place, so I'm hoping that is what turned the water back to that orange color. If not, I need to figure out where it's getting in at, and then figure out how to stop it. Odds are this weekend we'll do another w/c and I'll probably clean out the filter too and see if that makes any difference. I know mud has gotten into that by now, so I'm hoping if I take all the filter media out and hose it off good, then spray out the tank and drain it, that maybe I'll get ahead of the mud and get the water cleared up. Other suggestions still welcome too.
And thanks for all the nice compliments. I'm still sort of in awe that we did it ourselves. Looking at it now, I'm not sure how we managed it... We literally had one helper the very first weekend that we dug. He helped dig for like 2 hours, and that was basically the only help we got. We had a couple people help us lift the liner into the pond, since it was so heavy, but really we've done basically everything ourselves. Just the 2 of us. Who knew.
