Post #359,028
6/16/12 11:56:41 PM
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We got fishees
The house we bought came with a fish pond. We are in the city and it is essentially our entire front yard.
It was about 2/3rds filled, with a fountain, but no fish. The guy who sold it to us said he buys a handful of fish every year in the beginning of the season (nowish), and they die, and he replaces them, but they are nice to watch and the little kids really like them. Plus the pond is a money maker when he cleans all the coins out of it each year.
So my daughter gets a bag of fish, and the appropriate chemicals, and we clean it a bit, fill it to the top and set it up and let the fish in. 1 is happy, he spends a lot of time wandering, the others are scared shitless and they hang out under the rock and we never see them.
A neighbor comes by, notices we have the pond going. Would we like our fish back?
Huh?
It seems the owner wasn't ready to trust us with his fish, so he gave them to the neighbor. I don't know if it was a test and he meant to give them to us if we setup the pond, or the neighbor simply felt they should be "home".
Really? You got fish for us? Sure, bring them over.
4 of them arrived today. 6 more to come if these are happy. They are between 8 inches and a foot long. They are very pretty. I've never heard a fish eat before. These guys are loud when they eat. And the little ones came out. It seems they just needed company. We were expecting the big guys to eat them, but they seem ok together.
No Gryg, you can't eat them.
10 in this pond (of fish that big) might be tight, but it'll be fun to watch.
Now I need to go hang out on fish forums and learn how to build a pond filter.
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Post #359,031
6/17/12 12:31:56 AM
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My parents had a fish pond
4'x4', in the basement with a waterfall that came down the wall.
It had large colored carp and trout in it... it was pretty fun to feed them and watch the frenzy.
Of course, the basement smelled like mildew most of the time, too...
Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
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Post #359,032
6/17/12 1:12:26 AM
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Around here you need big pipes in the pond . . .
. . for the fish to sleep in, or you will have no fish in the morning. Raccoons will eat what they want and kill all the rest just for fun.
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Post #359,035
6/17/12 9:57:09 AM
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Given the pond takes up the front yard
An off the shelf filter will probably be the best bet. Home brew filters for a large pond need quite a bit of space. With the coins in the pond, you may want a carbon filter. If the water turns even a bit acidic, it will dissolve copper. If the annual fish kill story was not a hoax, that would be the most likely cause.
We have a FishMate filter + pump that are serving quite well. The only thing we're thinking of changing is the submersible pump. An external pump eats quite a bit less electricity than a submerged pump and it is one less unsightly cable in the pond.
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Post #359,047
6/17/12 6:49:48 PM
6/17/12 6:52:08 PM
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I got space
I figure I'll add another waterfall, 2 feet wide and 3 feet high or so. I already have one, much bigger, so it'll be a side to the main one.
Also, keep in mind I already have a pretty powerful pump just sitting here, unused.
But rather than fall over a cascade, it will flow/drip between filter levels. Each level will have increasing fineness of filter. These will be cleanable / hosable. So figure about 2 feet of filters that pull the large chunks, each filter 3 inches thick or so. Goal is ease of ripout, clean, and replace so I do it often enough.
After that, we'll have a layer of filter material such as this:
http://www.amazon.co...fish+filter+media
And after that, a layer of activated charcoal.
And after that, a layer of zeolite.
I miss anything?
It'll cost about $40 in materials, at least until we hit large quantities of activated charcoal and zeolite. I'll probably have to order that on the web.
Edited by crazy
June 17, 2012, 06:50:56 PM EDT
Edited by crazy
June 17, 2012, 06:52:08 PM EDT
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Post #359,052
6/17/12 7:48:55 PM
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Don't let Andrew's raccoon quote re pipes, get lost on list.
I can testify to their wanton extermination of chickens, just for human-style-fun: first-hand.
They are among the few creatures I have 0-sympathy for; when they try for the ferals' food ('alarmed' / motion sensor) my stack of rocks is handy.
A few successive barrages tend to keep them away for a few days, reinforced by my appropriately menacing growls as they flee.
(Pellet gun is next, if their persistence meets my insistence ... too often.)
Luck.
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Post #359,055
6/17/12 9:06:35 PM
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I can't stand raccoons
They eat our semi-feral's food as well.
They're just damned evil intelligent rats with hands. I don't care how "cute" they look: they growl and hiss and destroy things worse than any other creature around.
Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
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Post #359,057
6/17/12 9:26:13 PM
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Also, they are very dangerous disease carriers.
I've forgotten what is in their scat, but it's bad stuff. The biggest problem, though, is rabies. Rabies is a disease native to raccoons, so they don't die of it. They're just carriers, so you don't want to get bit by one.
On the other hand, when I was a child on the farm my dad shot a raccoon and my mother cooked it. I considered it delicious. I've been tempted to cook one, but I'm not sure what the health risks of city raccoons are.
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Post #359,059
6/17/12 10:14:12 PM
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Re: Don't let Andrew's raccoon quote re pipes, get lost on l
No Raccoons
Crazy lives in a city the fish are Rat food
"Pictures are better then words because some words are big and hard to understand"
Peter Griffin (Family Guy)
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Post #359,065
6/18/12 4:07:41 AM
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Saw a video to the contrary, few months back (+Raccoon ploy)
(Probably on PBS; no cable, and I never have reason to look at Mediocrity Media, Inc.)
Showed a travelogue of these guys walking a regular nightly route through urban areas + their destructive efforts to get into garages, houses via eaves
--if adjacent to an accessible, climbable object.
As to feral feeders, there's this:
http://thewildones.net/raccoons.htm
Raccoons can't jump
These photos were collected using a remote, motion triggered, 35mm camera. The setting is an acclimation cage that had been "opened" to allow the cats enter and exit at will. This is a sanctuary on protected property. We noticed we were going thru a lot of food and that the water was so dirty, we suspected we were feeding other woodland critters.
I set up a camera and here are the results. My cats taught me the obvious: that any surface with food can be reached by jumping. Raccoons, on the other hand, can't jump, as they carry all their fat in their rear end. They can climb any surface where they can get a hand hold. Knowing these two facts, I built the feeder pictured.
All you need to do is provide a feeding platform that they raccoons can't climb up onto, and a jumping level for the cats.
Caveat: We tried a variant on this, a weather shelter on a pole, with the "jumping off" launch pad, etc.
More elaborate, with sleeping compartments as well as food supplies, protected from rain and wind
This was for some ferals--virtual-pets by now: friend had been feeding a tribe for >10 yrs--who had to be moved. Were being silently trapped and sent to a kill-grade shelter by a local vulture capitalist/mobile home 'park' owner, for sheer spitefulness
(tmi to elaborate re the mindset of a mofo who was also trying to rip off the local blue-hairs in a bogus 'buy your lot' scam.)
Alas, the 3 here just wouldn't "jump up" for food! (yet I have seen 2 of them scoot up a walnut tree, as if a tyke.)
Had already been spoiled, I guess, via being fed/held in a large cage for many months as we plotted their 'escape' into freedom.
But Not to walk back whence they came!
Probably they're in better physical shape than a lot of 10+ yo. domestic cats. Oh well..
No reason to doubt this method can work, except ... where there are elderly or infirm who really can't make the jump :-/
And worth a try, in any event--just to confound these barrel-butted big rats. As in Heh.. Heh.. PISS OFF.
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Post #359,102
6/18/12 6:43:42 PM
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Sounds like you have it covered
Luckily, we're on our own well and far enough away from any sources of toxins that we could dispense with the carbon filter. (We let the newts and frogs test it out for a couple of years before we put the fish in ;-)
Strangely, we haven't seen any raccoons here in ages. They used to live in this house, but even raccoon road pizzas are getting rare. I guess they all moved to the city...
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Post #359,562
6/26/12 9:33:09 AM
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Ok, done
To start off with I took 2 dollar store organization bins, about a square foot each.
I drilled holes on the bottom of 1, filled it with 6 filter bags full of activated charcoal and ammonia neutralizer, and 2 layers of fish tank filter material.
The filter material, charcoal, and bags cost about $40.
I drilled a bunch of holes in the side of another. I places the filter box on top of the other, and placed a pump (had hanging around, previous project) in the pond, pushing water through a 1/2 inch tube to the top box, and anchored it down.
It worked, but was ugly.
Last night I ripped it apart. I took the bags of filter material and layed them into the channels of the current large fake rock waterfall. It is about 3 feet high and 4 feet wide, with 4 levels. I placed the hose on the top, and buried everything in real rocks and fake frogs and turtles. I forced the water flow to go from bag to bag, when done going through multiple bags of charcoal that are hardly seen.
Much happier now.
I told my neighbor he can deliver the rest of the fish. I'm going to teach them that tapping the rock leads to feeding, which in turn hopefully gives me a pavlov's feeding reponse. I'd also like to teach them to be hand fed.
He said you can't kill them if you try. In winter, the pond can freeze solid. When it thaws, they will start swimming again. I'll toss a heater in it anyway.
It is amazing as the people walk by. Sure, standard kid / family hang out, but the real fun comes from the tough guys getting all melty from the pretty fish.
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Post #359,633
6/26/12 9:38:27 PM
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Nice
What we've found with our pond is that the mechanical filter traps fine gunk at the surfaces immediately facing the incoming water (dead algea mostly, the pump intake prevents anything over 1/8" from getting in. Leaves just go straight to the bottom.) Given what you did with the waterfall, you could at some point substitute one of the filter levels with chuncks of lava rock. That'll give ammonia eating bacteria a place to grow.
Our pump is a bit undersized (3500 gal pond/ 2500 gal/hr pump) but even with that, everybody is happy (fish, frogs, tadpoles, salamanders, ...) without needing any water treatments. OTOH, we do only have four fish (smaller koi) at the moment, not 10 good sized ones.
Just curious, what kind of fishees did you end up with?
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Post #359,641
6/26/12 10:10:52 PM
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Still 4 big ones
I assume they were simply gold fish that got big. 3 gold, 1 albino with red eyes.
About a foot long each.
The rest haven't shown yet.
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Post #359,699
6/27/12 6:22:44 PM
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I hope you're right ;-)
We went with koi, not knowing those are related to the St. Bernard. Can't fling the food in fast enough. We got frogbit in an attempt to provide shade and shelter. It grows fast, but not fast enough to keep up with these things. What survived is in the indoor fishtank getting nursed back to life :-/
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Post #359,723
6/27/12 9:06:46 PM
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I learned you can't filter algea today
But boy, I have a hell of a waterfall going now. 3 pumps running all the time.
I have to add tadpoles, algea eating fish, and plants.
I went to the local real pond and grabbed a bunch of pond seaweed. The fish like it. It's a start.
I also drained about a 1/4 of it, pouring it in large buckets into my side growing area (the plants should love it), then put in about 40 gallons (still not back full) in, an 8 gallon bucket at a time after using a bit of this in each:
http://www.seachem.c..._pages/Prime.html
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Post #359,873
6/28/12 10:48:48 PM
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Slight tinge of snakeoil there
Dechlorination is one thing, but the detoxification of metals claim sounds like the marketdroids got a little out of control.
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Post #359,891
6/29/12 6:02:12 AM
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Yeah, I know
I care about it for the chloramine on the new water, I'm not worried about the rest.
I realised there is a "current" in there today. When we first got the fish, they swam in circles all the time. As I added pumps, they stopped. They are still swimming, just the water is passing by while they stay in place most of the time.
I'd say the whole pond gets pushed to the top of the rocks and runs the filter path every few minutes. The bottom of the rocks is a 6 inch drop so it aerates as well. Pushes up the local ion level. People love hanging out at waterwalls for that.
M told me they responded to the tapping before feeding by coming to the surface and swimming to her side. I thought they were, but I was waiting for someone else to tell me in case I was imagining it.
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