New Pond Project.

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New Pond Project.

Postby Ponddipperdave on Tue Jun 21, 2011 9:27 pm

Hi All,
It's been a poor year for my pond. It seemed that all my clumps of frogspawn disappeared without trace. I did see a tiny froglet leave the pond a week ago so maybe some survived but not in the numbers I'm used to.
The pesky heron was visiting all winter and despite me shooing him'her away each morning, he must have returned when I was at work. The result is I have hundreds of tiny puntures around the pond, so much so that it loses about a foot of water after each refill.
My ex-wife is an auction hound. She goes around putting bids in and selling the stuff on e-bay. One of her winning bids was a pallett of assorted goods from a bankrupt garden centre. When she unwrapped the pallet, the main content was a large garden shed and 6 full rolls of Butyl pond liner. The whole pallet only cost her £60 ! She got that amount for each of the rolls she advertised on e-bay. She had kept one roll back for myself and my son who is also a pondie.
My current pond is 12 foot by 10 foot and my portion of the new liner will extend it to 15 foot by 10 foot. It's a project I intend to start in September after the frogs & newts have left. It will be a wildlife pond again so no ornamental fish just sticklebacks.
Does anyone know of a tried & tested way to keep the Heron away? do those plasic herons work or the sound activated ones?
I had a beautiful pond last year, this year it just needs a supermarket trolley to make the desolation complete.
Any thoughts on the heron situation would be most welcome.
Thinking back to your shubunkin Alison, I chased the heron away with flailing arms and it dropped a frog into next doors garden. I saw it hop away into the undergrowth so it was safe anyway. The Heron also regurgitated a "Black Moor" into my pond where it stayed for a couple of years but probably fell to the same Heron later. My Newts continue to Thrive in abundance the numbers of hatchlings increasing year on year. The Newts love the Water Starwort.
Speak to you all soon
Dave :)
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Re: New Pond Project.

Postby alison on Fri Jun 24, 2011 5:31 pm

Oh Dave, that is such a shame about the frogs as I remember that you used to have millions of baby froglets leaving your pond each year. And even worse to have lost everything to the Heron. I have heard that the pretend heron is meant to be a good deterrent as they don't like to be near another Heron, but to be doubly sure it would work, you may need to move it round sometimes to make it look as if it is real.
I think you could be right about the shubunkin as I can't think of any way he could have jumped out of the pond at that spot. Luckily we haven't seen the Heron since.
Although the heron has ruined your pond what a great project to get into, making a new pond. You might have to think of a better deterrent for the edging though which is hard to think of, so good luck with that.

Actually Dave this is something that I think you would be able to shed light on. When I decided to have the little pond for my tadpoles I thought I was doing a great thing as they would have no preditors. Now though so many months after spawning and becoming taddies they haven't changed at all. They haven't got legs or any change from a tadpole. Could it be that they need more space to change as they are in a small preform.( It is about 18 inches deep in the deepest end and about six inches in the shallow end. It's a few feet long by about 18 inches wide.) Sonny thinks this is the case and so we have taken a few out and put them into the large pond. I am sure that usually they have changed by now but can't see any in the large pond to compare them to. The fish may have had a great feast on the taddies as the ghost koi stayed near them most days. I was thinking to move a few taddies at a time into the large pond over a space of a few weeks. What do you think? Could there be another reason that could affect the change of tads as well as overcrowding. There are only a few hundred I would guess whereas there did seem to be many more when they first hatched. Maybe they have eaten themselves due to space as well.
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Re: New Pond Project.

Postby retropwr on Mon Jun 27, 2011 8:17 pm

Hi there, Id love to be able to have a 10 x 15 pond.

Funnily I've heard exactly the oposite about the fake heron and that they actually attract others especially when they are looking for a mate. I had to go have a google to see if I could find the article and found this one instead.:-
http://www.fbas.co.uk/Herons.html

I think an electric fence to stop it walking into the water might work.
Richard
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Re: New Pond Project.

Postby alison on Sun Jul 31, 2011 2:43 pm

How are the plans going for the new pond Dave? Only another month and you can get digging. Did you sort out the heron deterrent? My neighbour in the ajacent street to me has had quite a few visits from the heron so maybe that is why I haven't seen him at my pond.
Are you filling it with sticklebacks you already have or do you need to stock up somehow?
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Re: New Pond Project.

Postby Ponddipperdave on Sat Oct 29, 2011 10:02 pm

Hi All,

Sorry I haven't replied sooner, I've had a massive Virus. It bypassed my fully paid version of AVG and ran riot. Luckily, I regularly backed up to Nero Backitup. Unfortunately, my new windows seven doesn't support Nero Backit up so I can't get at any of my pictures or music.
Anyway back to my Pond project. Nothings moved on unfortunately. We had a holiday in North Wales and coming back in early October the pond had gained a foot of rainwater after me getting down to about 6 inches. I've nothing left to empty the rest away into. If November is rainless, i might be able to attempt it again.

Dave
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Re: New Pond Project.

Postby alison on Fri Jan 20, 2012 3:31 pm

Dave how is it going? We seem to have had so much rain that I guess you won't have been able to get on with the pond at all. We even had snow last night. For a few days last week our ponds were frozen so the rain has at least brought back the warmer weather and the ponds are looking normal again. The birds were skating on the ice trying to get to any open water they could find. The waterfall kept the big pond open but the small pond was completely thickly iced over. I had put one of my decoy ducks in the little pond to keep it open a little. :) (I didn't have a ball) but it took an awful lot of tugging to break it free of the ice. It reminded me of Shackleton's ship that was frozen in the Ice and I thought just how hard it must have been when they had tried to get out.
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Re: New Pond Project.

Postby Ponddipperdave on Wed Mar 07, 2012 10:47 pm

Hi All,

Hibernation over again.
The Heron didn't return this Winter, It's probably waiting for me to put my new liner down!
I managed to remove the pebble beach and empty the water level to about a foot before the rains started. What's all this about a drought?
I've got about 50 frogs splashing about in the puddle at the bottom of my pond. No spawn yet though.
I've decided to restart the laying in August when the newts have gone. I left it until September last year but it didn't stop raining...Hope I've not put the mockers on August this year!
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Re: New Pond Project.

Postby alison on Mon Mar 12, 2012 12:42 pm

Hi Dave, now a question for you. I am glad to see that 50 frogs have come back. :D
In my little puddle of the prefab the frogs have really come back well and the pond is full of spawn. There are quite a lot in the large pond though as well which is good but I am not sure if there are as many as on previous years. The problem I have is that last year the taddies didn't change in the small pond until I eventually put a lot of them into the large pond and hoped for the best but I wondered as there is even more spawn this year if it could be a lack of food for them in the small pond that could be the reason they didn't change last year. If so we could have the same trouble. I had wanted to empty the little pond before they came and fill it with fairly clean water which would have time to algae up. By the time I emptied the pond and filled it again they were already at the mating stage. Is there anything I can do to make sure there is enough for them to eat to make the change into frogs??? Could it also be that there were too many to want to change but then I remebered the pics of the thousands you had in your pond that changed into froglets so it wouldn't be that. I know eventually they seemed to disappear or died so I don't want that to happen this year.
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Re: New Pond Project.

Postby kaz on Mon Jul 02, 2012 8:22 pm

Those blasted herons! I used to have a real problem with them, but resolved by having sheer sides to the pond so they couldn't wade. Looking forward to seeing the progress of your new project.
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Re: New Pond Project.

Postby alison on Tue Jul 10, 2012 12:39 pm

Dave I just heard on the weather that August will still be a washout but September is meant to be Hot Hot Hot a real Indian Summer. I think we need to just take it a day at a time and just go for it when possible.
The good thing that has happened is that my little tadpoles (loads of them) in the tiny pond have all changed into little frogleets. Hurray. :D
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Re: New Pond Project.

Postby Ponddipperdave on Sun Nov 18, 2012 11:16 pm

It's just about done...Yippee I got two lads to do all of the spadework.
Just waiting for the froggies to come a courtin.....
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Re: New Pond Project.

Postby alison on Wed Nov 21, 2012 1:28 am

That is brilliant. I bet you can't wait. I hope you get as many as usual in your new pond. My frogs normally come back the beginning of March but I have had them earlier and later so you can never tell.
I got a real shock when I read you had a massive virus and had to bypass..... and then I realised that you meant a computer virus not a medical one and not a heart bypass. :lol: Glad to see your health is okay but it is awful when you get a computer virus. I don't understand why people make these things. They just don't care how it might affect us all.
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Re: New Pond Project.

Postby Ponddipperdave on Wed May 01, 2013 11:01 pm

Well my new pond is up & running. It's actually 15 x 12 feet and no longer looks like a resevoir.
I've lined the edges with turf & planted bulbs and some summer plants in the turf.
Not many plants survived after I took them out of the pond so I have had to buy afresh.
The sun shone down into it over the weekend and I saw much to my surprise, about 20 clumps of frogspawn on the bottom.
The first tadpoles are hatching and I've got a few making there first little ventures away from the jelly.
Hundreds of Newts! I took a half bucket of rainwater down to the pond to water the plants. As I got to the bottom of the bucket, there were three full size newts in it. I've put these in the pond and I'll have to examine the other buckets tomorrow.
A pondskater has appeared from nowhere...it could have been on the pond plants I bought from the garden centre at easter.
Things are looking up and my pond interest is growing again. Tried to post a pic but it was too big. There's a photo size reducer in my latest computer Mag so I'll see how that goes and try again.
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Re: New Pond Project.

Postby alison on Sun May 05, 2013 7:43 pm

It is great to see you enjoying your pond again. It is easy to go 'off the boil' when things are going wrong. My sister had a pond with her neighbour and the neighbour decided to fill his side in so sold the fish etc. The pond was leaking and now there is no pond at all on either side. I said to my sister that she could just keep her side going but because of the leak and work to maintain they have emptied it all. I gained some koi and my other sister gained some koi so that was good for us but it is such a shame that the enjoyment of sitting watching the fish, listening to the sound of the waterfall etc is no longer happening at their home. I wouldn't like to be without mine and if for any reason the waterfall goes off it sounds eerie as if the silence is deafening.
So we wish you well with your pond. I am so jealous of you having newts.
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Re: New Pond Project.

Postby dampflippers on Wed May 08, 2013 5:29 pm

Your pond sounds great Dave- I think spring always makes ponds more exciting.

I hope you can persuade your sister to make a new pond. Could she just re-line her side and carry on like that?
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