K McZongos Outdoor Pond Journal

[K McZongo]

Creating this thread for my outdoor tub/pond which I started back in August, In my original welcome thread.

Summary of where we are now:

I started the pond off using 100 gallon Rubbermaid stock tank, four 8in cinder blocks (to raise up my pots), large aquariumcoop sponge filter, air pump, and a bunch of pearl weed cuttings. Started off seasoning the tub with old tank water, after about a week added a bunch of cherry shrimp culls and bladder snails. Added a few plants; Water Hawthorn, Water Poppy, Hardy Water Lilys, Anacharis, more excess pearl weed cuttings and java moss. Stocked the pond with a few Miyuki Medaka Ricefish and a handful of Japanese trapdoor snails. I also started testing out some pitcher plants (hybrid sarracenia) to see if they would survive my pond.

Anyways today, I topped off the pond and checked in on how my ricefish we're doing. Found approximately 30 fry that are in all different growth stages, I can't wait for the pond to fill in a bit more. 

Someone mentioned that we might be able to get Daphnia Magna to survive with Medaka ricefish since there are larger ones that they can't eat.  Last week I started up a culture and dumped some in at night. I'm pretty sure the Ricefish just ate them all up. We will see as I keep dumping Daphnia in. Added a more pitcher plants and a Venus flytrap as well since the other pitcher plants seem fine.

Link to my old post:

 

[AquaHobbyist123]

Very nice! I am hoping to do something like that next summer myself. Where I live it is not very cold, but in the winter temps go below freezing at night and it snows a little (twice or so each winter). Will be following this closely.

[OutBout]

Cool idea with having carnivorous bog plants at the pond surface. Do these plants care if their roots are constantly wet or do they need a dry period?

[K McZongo]

On 10/3/2022 at 6:03 PM, OutBout said:

Cool idea with having carnivorous bog plants at the pond surface. Do these plants care if their roots are constantly wet or do they need a dry period?

I'm somewhat of a newbie to pitcher plants. They always need to be wet/moist in some way ideally in low nutrient water. If they dry out they die. Most folks have 1/3rd-1/2 half the  pots in water. I have a little more or less depending on evaporation, but I see bunch of new growth.

So far they have survived being submerged in the pond for 16 hours when a racoons knocked them in the deepend. Since I have ziptied them in place they have got a bit of new growth. They should overwinter fine since I'm far enough south to avoid any snow.

[K McZongo]

Caught a few of the Miyuki, even some bigger fry, all lined up basking in the sun last week.

This week the water cleared up a lot of the floating aglea disappeared seems like the pond is stabilizing. The water hawthorn is surprisingly shooting out white flowers. Still getting regular visits from racoons Luckily they aren't messing with anything other than the floating pearl weed. They don't seem the be able to catch any medaka. Will probably end up putting a chicken wire top on.

[K McZongo]

Got tired of having the racoons mess around with my floating pond baskets and spawning mops, so I added a lazily built framed net with 1/2"pvc. The mesh is a bit small but it works.

Surprisingly I've been seeing a few large Daphnia in the pond as well, good to see that they can survive with the miyuki medaka Ricefish. 

The fry are all getting big enough to transfer to other tanks/ponds, but I think I'll be leaving them in till spring.

If anyone was wondering my pH finally dropped all the way back down to normal 6.8 ish. After I initially started up the pond with brand new cinder blocks (only briefly rinsing them). Took a total of about 2 and half months, I did not water change the pond at all since start up.

[K McZongo]

Since Cory's Livestream was on ponds today, I figured I'll post my daphnia/ mosquito larvae pot pond.

It's a 5 gallon plastic pot, I started last year by dumping old tank water from water changes in it and plant clippings. Mostly pearl weed and water sprite. Towards the end of summer I was getting a good couple teaspoons of daphnia every other day. Lucky the daphnia has survived all of our mild winter cold/rain and they seem to be bouncing back as the temp rises. 

 

[K McZongo]

Algae breakout in the pond as temps started to pickup. I think I might have added too many water hawthorn plants as it is a bit tough to see the fish. My sarracenia are starting to shoot out seed pods. Looking forward to producing some fish this year.

And of course my biweekly daphnia catch.