I don't really have a pond.
My front patio has a 50 gallon tile-lined tank--very pretty tile--built into a brick riser alongside the foundation. After years of disuse I am reviving it. Started with a couple of plants (a Longwood red aquatic Canna for color and some white pickerel rush for filtration). A first faintail goldfish (named Number One of course) came home a few days ago, and I'm waiting until I seem to have a decent nitrogen cycle going before I add one or two more.
Almost immediately the "pond" has an algae difficulty. I'm attempting to control this with daphnia in a peculiar manner. The pond has a pump and filter so a free-swimming daphnia population isn't in the cards. Instead my daphnia are now living within a Seachem zip bag tethered to the edge of the tank, with fingers crossed. Who knows, it might both clear the tank and provide me with live bait for Number One and successors. I wait to see what happens. At worst I'm out $25 and will have to try something else. But tinkering is fun.
My front patio has a 50 gallon tile-lined tank--very pretty tile--built into a brick riser alongside the foundation. After years of disuse I am reviving it. Started with a couple of plants (a Longwood red aquatic Canna for color and some white pickerel rush for filtration). A first faintail goldfish (named Number One of course) came home a few days ago, and I'm waiting until I seem to have a decent nitrogen cycle going before I add one or two more.
Almost immediately the "pond" has an algae difficulty. I'm attempting to control this with daphnia in a peculiar manner. The pond has a pump and filter so a free-swimming daphnia population isn't in the cards. Instead my daphnia are now living within a Seachem zip bag tethered to the edge of the tank, with fingers crossed. Who knows, it might both clear the tank and provide me with live bait for Number One and successors. I wait to see what happens. At worst I'm out $25 and will have to try something else. But tinkering is fun.
