Pond Advice
Any pond experts out there?
I have a bucket which I euphemistically refer to as a pond. It has 1 very large frog, 2 newts, 4 snails and a zillion tadpoles:
I love the tadders, the ones who have grown legs are really cocky – they are the ones who are sitting on the bit of wood. They sit there as they can breath which the other tadders cannot and it is as though they are lording it over the undeveloped ones!
Recently the pond has started to smell and the water looks thicker if that makes any sense? I pulled some weed out of it the other day as it looked a bit congested, and the smell was indescribably awful.
Is there anything I can/should do to improve it? I’m worried that the water may be bad for the tadpoles etc?
Have you had the pond long? Could it still be equalising and balancing? I’m thinking it might be in need of an oxygenator plant as well?
When it starts to smell I have heard people suggest cleaning out the weed, if it’s algae rather than oxygenator. Also any surface debris, leaves etc. Plus also the deep debris if there’s a lot. Then you can try replacing some of the water. Empty about a third out, and replace with fresh water, but it needs to be rainwater, or water that has stood for a few days, as they don’t like tap water. Then probably add an oxygenating plant just to help with the balance.
Hope they survive, I love tadpoles. We started a similar pond this year in a barrel, http://great-little-minds.blogspot.com/2011/04/barrel-pond-23042011.html but no creatures yet. I’m hoping the frogs find our pond next year, I resisted the urge to add frogspawn to ours this year and have left it to nature!
Thanks, I’ll try that. Can you recommend an oxygenating plant? (I’ve no idea!)
xx
We’ve got starwort as our oxygenator, We used this website http://www.puddleplants.co.uk/oxygenator-floating-plants/ to plan our planting for the barrel, as it divides the plants into different sections. Be warned you may be tempted to get some pretty flowering plants too. Too many jumped in my basket!
You might be able to get them locally in a garden centre or pond place too? But good idea to look at what you actually want first. Personally we went for plants native to UK and that attracted wildlife. I would love some damsel flies, that would be so cool.
Hope it’s feeling better soon
Fi x