My goldfish pond

[sissy]

I know northern tool sells a lot of the sunterra products .

 

[j.w]

Wow what a big undertaking they are doing w/ that water project and hope it all goes well for them and that they get their supplies and luggage back soon. Will be neat to see the finished project in action! Good for all of them in doing this for the people in that town :bowdown:

 

[CometKeith]

Thanks for the info Sissy. i think I may try fixing the old one because it did work really well. The new one filter is more expensive, but is taking longer to clean the pond after I disturbed the bottom this morning. I think I'll try getting bigger hoses because they recommend that and see if it's better. Thanks JW. It is a big enterprise. They have been planning it all year. it's not even a class so they don't get class credits, but it is something very exciting for them. Also it's great because they learn how to plan and implement a project, work with cultural differences, and get great experience out of it.

 

[ponder630]

CometKeith,

I saw the garden store by me (Downers Grove) selling green and leopard frogs this morning. I bought 3 tadpoles last year and I saw two of my frogs this year. They say the tadpoles look identical and you will know it you got green frogs if they stay at your pond.

 

[sissy]

I use sump pump hose if you want to save money 10 dollars and it really holds up well .I ran it all winter for 2 winters so far and comes with clamps and 2 adapters which came in handy for my stock tank pumps
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[CountryEscape]

I use the sump pump hose, too, and besides the clamp that pulled apart, I have been well pleased with it, using it for 2 years also, and using it through the winter.
Look, Sissy's sump pump hose comes with a toad! Speaking of which, I have a pair of them bantering back and forth with each other tonight, see who is the most macho, I reckon. :blueflower:

 

[CometKeith]

Sissy, I love your toad! That an interesting idea about sump pump hoses. Can animals chew threw them easier? CE have you found them to be more brittle in the cold? I would think they would crack more easily. When we built our house 15 years ago we found all these toads in our window wells. Being good Samaritans we brought them to a nearby nature reserve. Now I know that reserves don't want you to take anything or introduce anything into them, but at the time it seemed like a good idea. The people that lived here before us had a pond so that is probably where our toads came from. I never saw their pond because we bought the house in the winter and tore it down right away. Ponder I would love to get a leopard frog. What is the name of the place? Did you ever check out Lurvey's?

 

[ponder630]

CometKeith, it is called Wannamaker's in Downers Grove. If you swing by here, another nice place is one of the satellite Aquascape's stores in Lisle about 4-5 miles west on Ogden from Wannamaker's. They have a two rock bottom ponds that are nice to look at, but they have a lot of fish there too and supplies. Between the two stores, I pretty much have all my ponding needs taken care of.

I did visit Lurvey's twice last week, once during the weekend and one more time when I headed North for work. Very nice store, but I talked to the main guy there and he said he stopped carrying fantail and wakins because they were too slow of a swimmer and a lot of his customers kept coming back to buy more and he found out they kept getting eaten by predators because they swim slower. I did like how he operated though, quarantines fish for a week upon receiving delivery, getting livestock from the big name hatcheries and while I was there a couple brought in a few sick fishes and he took out his microscope and took a sample of both fish to see what parasites they have. Thank you for telling me about Lurvey's, I now have 3 stores to shop for my ponding needs.

 

[CountryEscape]

Keith, my line pulled apart, it didn't leak. The only leaks I've had were at the water surface, so the ice might be an issue. I have all of my line that comes out of the water wrapped in a rubber insulation wrap and zip tied in place. I've not had any other issues. I also had a check valve that was right above water surface on the Skippy that got a crack in it. I moved that down into the water of the Skippy (new one, that is) and hope that no issue this year. I would say if you have raccoons, they might be able to chew through the sump pump hose easier than say PVC, but for the price, and ease in replacing it, so far I'm sold on it. The only drawback is that you pretty much have to splice every 5 or 6'. There is a smooth area in the line on the ends and then every 5 or 6'. If you try to splice in the middle of that, where the ribs are, you won't get a good seal, at least I've not sure how you would. The ribs are maybe 1/4" thick, and you would have to really clamp it tight, which in my opinion might tear the part in between the ribs. Just a thought.

 

[CometKeith]

Thanks ponder. I'll have to check them out. I can't buy any more fish because I have more than enough already, but I might buy a tadpole or two. I like my green frogs. I sat next to my pond reading the Sunday paper today and the biggest one sat on a rock just a few feet away from me keeping me company! The green frogs are cool because they come out in any weather and any time of the day and even at night. I put in 5 or 6 tadpoles a few weeks ago and have not seen them since. I may have more frogs than I know what to do with if i'm not careful CE I think I may just stay with regular tubing because I think the cold by us might make it too brittle. I never take my hoses in over the winter. I think it's everyone's worse nightmare that a hose breaks when away on vacation and having the pond lose all it's water. My pond this morning had a sudsy look by some of the plants. I think my fish are starting to spawn. On no... more babies?!
Thanks JW. We have always volunteered a lot as a family so this was something that we are very proud of our daughter doing. From what some of the other students told us it's pretty amazing being there. The children from the village follow the engineering students around everywhere they go and are always bringing them small gifts. It's pretty amazing that they don't even have electricity or running water in a village of almost 1000 people. I guess we take a lot of things for granted.

 

[CometKeith]

A peaceful evening sitting by the pond. Everything is going good. The plants are growing and the fish and frogs seem happy. It looks like the male goldfish are finally beginning to chase the females a little in the mornings now that the weather has been a little warmer. You can see a frog sitting on a planter on the far right in these photos if you look carefully.

 

[callingcolleen1]

Looks real peaceful and relaxing Keith! Water looks nice too. Did you get any storms last night? Thought I saw in TV the storms from down south looked like they were going to head out your way?

 

[CometKeith]

Colleen, It hasn't been bad here at all. We got a hard rain for about an hour tonight and the storm moved on and the temps dropped a lot. I think the really severe weather was in St Louis and southern Illinois last night and parts of central Illinois today. I am posting some interesting pics of the pond where you can see the rippling of the water with the fish. You can see a lot of the babies. There is one that has about doubled in size in the last few weeks. it has a mostly white section towards it's tail. It thinks it's the boss of the pond and bullies all the other fish including the adults. The last pic is of my frogs sitting between the parrot feathers and sweet mint.

 

[callingcolleen1]

That is a cute frog in the last picture, and a good shot too! It looked like it was going to rain here all day, but none came, then hubby when out to water, and I started to cut the grass, then it rained! I wanted to cut the last bit of grass, so I did it quick in the rain, got wet too and ran in the house quick to change, then it quit raining! I give up, going to watch TV!

 

[CometKeith]

Thanks Colleen. The green frogs are so cool to watch. They are like little skin divers how they hang out in the water deciding where to go and they propel themselves so easily to where they are going. Made me think of calling them diver dans. Remember that show in the 60's? I couldn't remember it exactly and looked it up. It was one of my favorites when I was a kid. Now that I look at it and omg..... That's what I watched ??