Tried a lily pond this year...

[Oddball]

Had a visit from a neighbor today. He must have come in while I was running pond pads to the sink for cleaning. We get a bunch of these around the pond and inside many of the plants like our Bromeliads.

 

[BrookKeeper]

awesome lily pond, Oddball... what else are you holding out on?

 

[boldtogether]

You just answered half a dozen questions I have for my pond with the pictures alone!
You sir, are the man.
Beautiful everything.

 

[boldtogether]

We enjoyed the pond a lot this year and decided to set up another one and try our hand at propagating a giant amazon water lily. So, we picked up a 3500 gal pond that we'll be setting up before the early spring rains.
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Some of the wakins will be transferred to the new pond, as well as trapdoor snails and gammarus shrimp. We'll also border the pond with giant Thai elephant ear plants as well as some other varieties of smaller water lily species.

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The larger pond should provide enough room to grow out a couple of hi-fin banded sharks. It's been decades since I've grown this species out so, I'm looking forward to getting them again.

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Mosquito and hair algae control will be via Florida flag fish (along with the trapdoor snails)

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I would like a couple dozen of these...were would you suggest I procure said fish? Vector control perhaps?

 

[spadoc79]

Wow....Thats nice....Im feeling motivated to do my own pond now...Thanks

 

[Oddball]

I bought the wakin goldfish from a vendor on eBay. The trap door snails and gammarus shrimp were also from eBay. The flagfish were from a seller on aquabid.com.

The frogs, dragonflies, water striders, hummingbirds, and spiders were simply in the neighborhood and crashed the party.

 

[Oddball]

I forgot to mention some other visitors. We have tons of lizards making use of the pond to get water and hunt insects.







And, it's cool that many of these lizards nest in our plants. We've found newly hatched lizards and clutches of eggs around the pond plants and potted plants around the back porch.

We also have a few unwanted visitors like, 5 different wasp species, black widow spiders, chiggers, ticks, red bugs, fire ants, and mosquitos. And, we discovered early on that going barefoot around the pond or yard is a major no-no. For the reasons above and because of these guys showing up every couple of days.

 

[jamntoast]

great diversity living around you, very cool. love the flowers. I hope those giant water lilly's work out for you, I can only imagine the looks on peoples faces when they see those in your pond.

 

[Warborg]

Nice setup. When I had my pool pond, I got all kinds of critters that would come visit( some moved in).

 

[Oddball]

We set up a 450 gal quarantine tank for some koi we picked out from BDK (Best Koi Direct). These 5, along with the chinese hi-fin sharks, and some of the wakin goldfish will occupy the 3500 once we can fill it with enough rain water. We have several cisterns around the yard waiting on the weather.