Our Pond

Julieta and I built a pond in our back yard in July of 2000. We added plants later that summer, and fish in the spring of 2001. In the Spring on 2002 we added a second smaller pond for water plants.

Click on the following years to jump to a particular year or scroll down to see the evolution of the pond.

Colours of the month in the garden

Jan

Feb

Mar

April

May

June

October

November

Before the pond in 1998.

-2000-

First we dig the hole. The backyard had a lot of grass at the time ...

We had recently removed some green carpeting from our den so we could get back to the hardwood floors, so we line the hole with some of that green carpeting so the liner wont get punctured by roots. Then add the liner (which gets really really hot really really fast in the sunlight), and then fill it up with water. The pond takes about 550 US gallons (2000 litres) of water to fill.

Finally we add some rocks around the edge to keep the liner in place and prevent animals from digging under it, and some more scenic sandstone on top of that, and some more landscaping.

Then comes winter. We leave the pump running but he pond comes close to freezing over a couple times on the coldest days of the year

-2001-

Spring again and now we add 3 goldfish which by the end of summer have become 55

Its late summer and we are starting to think about the coming winter, and pond stuff is going on sale. To increase the chances of our fish surviving, we are going to bring some of them inside for the winter, so we need to build an indoor pond. This time we are going with a pre-formed 75 gallon pond which we are sitting up in our family room.

In October began introducing plants and fish to the indoor pond eventually moving 12 inside for the winter. The plants survived until January when the water lettuce and water hyacinths died off, leaving only the oxygenators ... which continue to grow quite happily. The fish are still doing fine and are also growing quite happily.

Outside the fish are hanging out on the bottom and are doing OK so far. We left the pump running again and added a small doughnut-shaped heater this year to make sure the pond doesn't completely freeze over.

-2002-

We only lost one fish over the winter and we brought the inner fish back out to join their brothers and sisters. We also added a couple tadpoles and didn't see them as frogs until the middle of August.

We added a UV clarifier this year to help with the algae, and built a smaller shallow pond for bog plants since the netting that we were using in the man pond made it hard for plants to grow there.

Here are some pictures of the pond as of June 2002:

In late July 2002 we suffered a major loss of fish. Within 3 weeks we lost more than three quarters of our fish to infection, with 51 dead. Among the dead were all 3 of the originals, most of the biggest, and my favorite fish (the overly friendly goldfish) but at least we were able to save some of the family ...

Since we wanted to completely clean and disinfect the pond anyway, we took this opportunity to make part of the pond deeper in preparation for winter, and added a bigger and better filtration system. Now we have an in-pond filter, an external filter in the garage, and a U/V clarifier, all of which has made the water much clearer. We also added an air bubbler to help during the very hot weeks of late July and early August.

Fortunately our two frogs were fine, though they needed some encouragement to leave their home for the temporary renovation.

Then another winter (2002/2003) was upon us and we moved 4 of the fish inside to the same indoor pond we set up last year, and left the 5 fish and the two frogs outside. For several days over the winter the pond was almost completely frozen over.

Here's a picture of the indoor pond and the 4 indoor fish

This year the indoor fish shared their room with another small highly excitable goldfish in an aquarium. Here is the small goldfish swimming (quickly) around his Christmas tree.

-2003-

In the summer of 2003 we added 4 bullfrog tadpoles to the upper pond, and while we were doing that we found that we had at least 5 small fish swimming around the upper pond as well as several small fish in the lower pond. The new frogs are much more interested in sunning themselves on the rocks than the previous 2 frogs which we haven't seen for a while.

By the end of the summer we did see a big tadpole swimming around in the big pond ... so we may have more frogs than we thought.

We brought 6 fish inside this 2003/2004 winter along with the UV clarifier (which helped a lot) to augment the indoor pump and air generators. We left 11 fish outside.

-2004-

Everybody survived.

Now they are all back outside and there are at least four frogs, including one new one, hanging out in and around the pond.

-2005-

After continued attacks by raccoons (who like disassembling the lights in the pond) and cats (who like to stare at the fish) we decided to add a defense system to the pond. For $60 the motion and heat detecting water sprinkler has done a pretty good job deterring the local critters from menacing the pond without driving away the birds.

This is the first year we tried adding Microbe Lift to the water and that did a very good job keeping the water clear in the summer.

This year we added a second web cam that can see a bit into the infra-red so we can get an idea what is creeping around at night.

-2006-

-2007-

-2008-

-2009-

-2010-

-2011-

-2012-

After the winter cleanup we found that the liner for the upper pond was ripped making it impossible to use the waterfall between the two ponds. Rather than replace the entire upper liner we decided to isolate the upper pond with just the plants and a small pump to keep the water moving. We also decided to remove the big physical filter in the garage and just use the small filter, the bubbler, the 35w pump, and the UV clarifier in the lower pond. As you can see in the photo below the UV clarifier is now sitting on the edge of the lower pond - we need to try and hide it some more.

We did not use any Potassium Permanganate this year since it seems like all of the issues related to the infection a decade ago have ended, but we continue to add the beneficial bacteria.

We have a new water lilly that's very aggressively taking over the lower pond and pushing out the other three older lillies, so we need to keep it in check.

This year we seem to be down to about 7 fish, but we didn't see any obvious losses.

The Japanese maple hadn't been doing very well for the last couple years after something tried climbing on it, so we removed it late in the year. Otherwise things in the garden are growing quite well.

-2013-

-2014-

We can see some new small fish in the pond this year so it looks like the population is increasing again

We painted the garage this spring and in fall the back yard looked like this:

-2015-

Here is the new garage, with wood siding, glass block windows, and a party door in November after an early snow, but before it has been painted, with the wisteria still covered by tarp

-2016-

continuing to use the beneficial bacteria and the UV clarifier.

We now have an underwater camera, so here are some shots of the fish in May 2016 from below the water


and a movie

Over the summer we painted the doors of the garage and the wisteria began reclaiming the garage roof. Here is a 360 panorama taken over the summer.

-2017-

This year we finally removed the last patch of grass in the back yard and planted vegetables there.

The wisteria is continuing to work on reconquering the new garage, and we have moved our eating area to the party door.



It looks like we have about 15-20 fish in the pond.

-2018-

'pac man' ice in the pond in January

Algae eye in the pond in January

Views near the upper pond

and one from on top of the garage looking back at the house

This year we added a 240 V outlet to the garage to support our two electric cars (Leaf and Tesla Model 3), which involved digging a thin trench through the north side of the back yard, but the plants seemed to come through it ok.

-2019-

another hawk visited the pond in April

We are now up to about 30 fish in the pond with a nice mix of colors

The polar vortex this winter did a fair amount of damage to the wisteria and the grape vine, among others. We took the opportunity to clean the debris off the garage roof that was under the wisteria and pruned back a bunch of the dead wood. By July the wisteria was on its way to reclaiming the garage roof.

The raccoons have been more aggressive this year (disassembling the pump in the upper pond, pushing rocks into the lower pond to push the net down) so we added in a couple more powerful motion-sensitive sprinkler scarecrows which seem to be working pretty well, and added some bamboo rods to help hold up the net in the pond and give the water lilies more room.

-2020-

All of the fish made it through the winter so we still have about 30, growing quickly.

We now have a bunny as a regular visitor to the yard in addition to the usual squirrels.

The wisteria has recovered from last year's polar vortex but the grape vine decided to start over, so we trimmed most of the smaller branches that had covered the wall by the back door and had made it all the way down the side of the house to the front of the house.

-2021-

It looks like all of the fish survived the winter, so we still have around 35.

The bunny was eating too many plants so it has been banished from the garden. This was made easier by the new wooden fence (with metal posts this time) that we had installed to replace the previous fence.

This year we have seen an eagle flying over the back alley and a hawk in the front yard in addition to the usual visitors. A pair of hummingbirds stayed in the garden during August.

Or largest and oldest fish hasn't showed up for food since early summer. There is no evidence of foul play.

The wisteria has made it back to the alley side of the garage, though still not to the extent of coverage it had back in 2015 when the garage was replaced.

Our neighbour's tree of heaven was cut down over the summer which should help the rest of our plants, and add more light to the garden

This year we started using Cornell's free Merlin Bird ID app to identify the bird calls that we hear in the garden. So far no surprises.

-2022-

We have had a few new visitors this year ... a fox walking around the upper pond at night

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We get several other regular visitors to the pond including raccoons, squirrels, skunks, possums, and an assortment of birds and butterflies.

 

and an assortment of birds (pigeons, robins, starlings, hummingbirds, a pair of cardinals, a woodpecker) and various insects ...

Things we used to do but are not doing any more

• For a couple years we used a small heater in winter to keep the pond from completely freezing over (e.g. the Thermo-Pond), but haven't used it for a few years now. There are only a couple weeks where the pond completely freezes over and a kettle of hot water seems to do the trick opening a hole back up.
  
• We used to have a large barrel filter, but have found that adding Microbe Lift each year seems to work as well, along with our small in-pond filter.
• Similarly we used to use a U/V clarifier to help keep the water clear but the beneficial bacteria in microbe lift seems to be doing its job as well.
  
• We used to keep some air stones bubbling in the pond but lately have been relying on the outflow of the pump as a mini waterfall to keep the water aerated.