Some further pottering around the frog pond today, with some additional shelves, plants from the existing garden and associated adjustments.
Firstly I made a necessary change to the main island. The island (which is actually a disused plastic compost bin) as it was was not very stable,, and already seemed struggling with the limited weight I had on top of it. I had it lying on its side which made it a little lower, as I wanted, but gave it issues with stability. So I’ve changed it back to right way up now and it is MUCH stronger. I then added several new plants to it and moved the ones I already had on it off, to one of several new shelves I set up in the water, either just above or just below water level (they will all be below water level soon as I plan to add more water to the pond.
I’ve also found some more larger potted plants around the property to place outside the pond, working towards disguising it in the long term. Eventually I’d like for it to not be obvious that its a converted above-ground portable pool.
Next I made a start on transferring water to the pond from several large containers around the place. I have quite a number that hold from 10’s to 100’s of litres and are mostly full with green, nutrient-rich, pondy type water, that are currently just providing mozzies with breeding havens. It seems a natural move to put these towards the top-up I want to do on the frog pond water levels. I also have two very full blue barrels – 200l each I think) at one end of the pond, that are filled with water from emptying the pool a year ago – hopefully not too algaefied as they’ve been sealed away from light etc. I have to figure out the best way to get them emptied into the pond. In the process of starting the water transfer I found even more plants I can utilise in the pond and redid the plants on the island and shelves. Again.
No sign of the fish in the pond, but no sign of dead ones either, so I assume they are living too deep to see them. They’ll probably be more visible once the water clears up considerably. Tadpoles seem very happy still. Below some pics of today’s changes.
And below a video of tadpoles taken yesterday.
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