Fish ‘n’ Tips (Garden Ponds & Water Features in general)

Member Name: fruitcake

Product:	Garden Ponds & Water Features in general
Date:	03/11/00 (553 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A talking point in your garden…

Disadvantages: Not always for the right reasons!

Some competition prizes can be more trouble than they are worth, and I sometimes wonder if the pond-liner and pump combination that turned up a few years ago is one of them. If you are considering such a feature then read on…

Mine is not the biggest of ponds (about 8’ x 4’ x 3’6” deep) but it took me five hours to dig the hole from heavy clay soil – hardly a job you can do in an afternoon. You also have to take into account the time it takes to lay the electric cable for the pump from the pond to the house (encased in narrow plastic piping to avoid accidents when digging), pot up the aquatic plants, cat-proof it all and make everything safe if you’ve got kids. And then you have to maintain it all, particularly if you are going to keep fish in there.

I am not entirely keen on the idea of keeping fish in an artificial environment, but improving the lot of some who have it worse anyway seems like a good idea. When my mother-in-law announced she was fed up with the three who had swam in a tiny tank in her kitchen for some years, I was pleased to be able to give them a home. It would appear that they are happiest in cramped conditions, because within twelve months mine were all doing what fish do naturally, with reckless abandon, and there are now twenty-eight of them. And counting…

All this free loving demands a lot of energy, and these little breeders seem to do well enough during the summer months on flake food or pond pellets, but they are also fond of the odd piece of brown bread and any cucumber slices that are going begging. In the winter, the fish are largely dormant, and the detritus and vegetation that inevitably accumulate throughout the year is enough to meet all their nutritional needs.

The arrival of summer in our neighbourhood is no longer marked by the sound of the season’s first lawn-mower, but by a series of screams indicating that I have decided it is warm enough
to give the pond its annual clean-out, and have encountered The Frogs. One I can deal with, but when they are leaping around my hair in numbers it’s a different story. Others are probably made of tougher stuff than I am, but from my point of view, cleaning-out-the-pond day is a calendar fixture I could do without. On the plus side, it has provided hours of entertainment for the kids – “That one scared her, she jumped higher than *he* did!”

My husband has tacked wire netting on a wooden frame all the way round the pond so that the kids can see in without actually falling in. Very sensible too, but I can’t help thinking that if he was the one who had to haul buckets of water over the fence every year, then he would have realised that a gate somewhere along it’s length would come in handy…

In the old days when we still had three fish I’d just throw the water onto the vegetable plot, which led to one of them spending four hours under a radish on the hottest day of the year (and surviving!) before I’d even noticed he was missing. Nowadays, we have abandoned the allotment look, so I have to stagger the length of the garden with each bucket of smelly water before throwing it down the drain.

Because I can never be sure just how many fish are in the pond most of the time, each bucket has to be sieved into another one to catch any escapees before the water is tipped away. While they are happy enough to fling themselves suicidally in front of next door’s cat, you will find that getting them to see the wisdom of swimming into your net is another matter entirely. This year one of mine had taken refuge in an empty lager can which had fallen to the bottom of the pond during a family barbecue, and was extremely reluctant to come out. Experience has shown that gentle persuasion is usually enough in such situations, but as a last resort an empty threat involving Captain Birdseye will usually see th
e offender swimming around with his mates again in a bucket.

The bucket should be left to stand for a while beside the pond to allow the temperature of the water to equalise before adding the fish. There aren’t many things that pond fish complain about, but sudden changes of water temperature are one of them and they are liable to show their disgust by simply dropping dead on you. Once you have cleaned and filled the pond again, wait for an hour or so before returning them for the same reason. The chemicals present in tap water will also upset your fishy friends, but additives to neutralise their effects are widely available, and should be used at each water change.

Another common additive is supposed to inhibit the growth of algae in the summer, and therefore prevent the water from turning green, though I have never found it to be all that effective. Within days you are looking at pea soup again, and the fish are probably wishing you’d spent the money on throwing them another can of lager.

Hot, thundery weather can dramatically increase carbon-dioxide levels in a small pond – you can redress the balance and add oxygen to the water by turning on the fountain. Pump filters need de-gunging too (as often as once a week), and it’s usually the case that when your fish are at the surface gagging for breath, your pump is out of action and you haven’t got the will to fumble around in the murky depths in attempt to clean it. At times like this, putting a hose quickly over the surface will do just as well.

Winter brings it’s own challenges too. According to the experts, you’re supposed to float a tennis ball on the water to stop it freezing over. In practice, the ball usually blows around the pond until it wedges fast against one of the rocks or plants at the side, and you are left with the task of sliding at speed down an icy path with a saucepan of boiling water when the pond freezes over. Anyone
similarly coming to grief with their balls might find it worth knowing that you should never use force to break the ice – fish are very sensitive to the shockwaves that are generated and can easily be killed in this way. The usual method of dealing with a frozen pond is to stand your saucepan of boiling water on the ice until it melts a hole sufficient for any build-up of toxic gases to escape.

There’s no denying the incredible feeling of peace that can come from just looking at pond fish idly doing nothing, or sharing with your child the magic moment when a silvery-blue dragon fly comes to inspect the proceedings. Nights when candles flicker around the edge of the pond as a focal point to a summer party are the ones that get remembered for a long time afterwards, but if you are tempted by the thought of such idyllic scenes, don’t let these ideas blind you to the amount of work involved in creating them. Should you choose to go ahead, there are plenty of good books written by experts around with far more information than I can give, but I hope these experiences of an ordinary family have been helpful in allowing you to come to your decision.

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