Wildlife Pond- urgent help needed

[SMaltes]

Hi everyone.

Well, I need your help. I'm 18, and me and a few friends decided that our school project for this year would be to build a wildlife pond: we wanted to leave something we made in the school, this beeing our senior year.

So, we started our project. We opened up the pond in January. Since then, it rained and the pond is filled with water. It has a maximum 40cm of depth, and is 2.5x5m long.

Now, we don't really know what to do next. The water is still murky, and we haven't seen much signs of life (except a dead slug and some mosquitos). Water pH is acid (around 5.8). We have some vegetation around the pond (not much, but some).

What should we do next? Should we try and introduce tadpoles? Should we introduce some algaes (in our school we have microoscopical algae that we can use)? The problem is... we only have 5 more months to finish the project before school ends.

We really need some advice, since few people seem to be interested in a simple pond. Thanks in advance guys.

[Deb London]

Hi,

Did you introduce any native pond plants? Sounds like you haven't. Ones that grow under water (oxygenators), ones that float and ones that live near the edge (marginals) usually help the pond along enormously.

You can usually cadge pond plants from other people with ponds. It's important to make sure they are not going to become invasive ecological nightmares. This is a thread with some good advice for choosing the right plants:
Native pond plants.

Good luck.

[Tursiops2]

Download this pdf from Natural England: NE27 - Garden ponds and boggy areas: havens for wildlife
and the Pond Conservation Trust's website also has a lot of useful information. Pond Conservation | Home
T2

[SMaltes]

Originally Posted by Deb London

Hi,

Did you introduce any native pond plants? Sounds like you haven't. Ones that grow under water (oxygenators), ones that float and ones that live near the edge (marginals) usually help the pond along enormously.

You can usually cadge pond plants from other people with ponds. It's important to make sure they are not going to become invasive ecological nightmares. This is a thread with some good advice for choosing the right plants:
Native pond plants.

Good luck.

Thanks for the reply!

No, we still haven't introduced any plants to the pond. We were worried if we should wait a little more for everything to "settle down" around the pond before we introduced plants and animals, since it's still raining a lot around here. Should we try to introduce plants already?

[Kayleigh]

Don't introduce animals if its a wildlife pond they will find it on their own..
I would wait for now to add marginals until all risk of frost has passed but you can add lots of oxygenators now as they live in the water and should be hardy enough they will help keep the water clean...
Look at this thread for more info..

Building a new pond

[Deb London]

It's hard to get them at the mo, but it is possible. I planted some recently (Brooklime) and it has 'taken', though it's growing slowly due to the cold. When you plant do not use garden compost as it is too rich. I used a clayey subsoil from the digging of the pond; if you want to spend money you can get special aquatic soil.

Pond plants usually carry microorganism and a few small creatures. When these start to grow too, I think you will have a couple of good links in different food chains within your new pond.

[Dragonyka]

Originally Posted by Deb London

if you want to spend money you can get special aquatic soil.

You can get a 20L bag of aquasoil from a big B&Q for under £4. One bag was enough for the 7 or 8 plants I put in my pond a couple of weeks ago. These are starting to grow already and have coped with the frost we had last week without any obvious problems. When you chose your plants, check the planting depth carefully before you put them into the pond

[SMaltes]

Originally Posted by Kayleigh

Don't introduce animals if its a wildlife pond they will find it on their own..
I would wait for now to add marginals until all risk of frost has passed but you can add lots of oxygenators now as they live in the water and should be hardy enough they will help keep the water clean...
Look at this thread for more info..

Building a new pond

The problem is that, at the moment, I only have available 4 kinds of plants: the Anubia Nana, the Cladophora aegagropila algae, the Egeria densa ( Large-flowered Waterweed ) and the Microsorium pteropus (Java fern). Would any of these be helpfull to the pond, and, if so, would they be able to survive, considering the pond's current state?

[Kayleigh]

I have not heard of the Cladophora aegagropila algae but they look like aquarium ornamental Japanese moss balls not suitable for an out door pond..
Are the other plants from an indoor aquarium...
you need to get some pond plants and ask when you get them if they are native and are they invasive and avoid anything that says floating pennywart as you will never get rid of it and it will choke the pond in short time.

[Dragonyka]

I know you probably don't have the money to go and buy plants so why not extend your project slightly to involve the rest of your school community? I'm sure there must be pupils or teachers at your school who have ponds at home. So you could 'advertise' around school for cuttings/splittings of plants? Although, the experts (note, I'm not one of these!) might advise against this as it may transfer disease from one place to another - anyone?

Then you could put the offerings into buckets, and either identify them yourselves, or photograph them and post the photos on here for identification (which those same experts are fantastic at doing.) Any plants that are not appropriate could be composted either at school, if they have them, or at home.

If you really wanted to go the whole hog, you could organise a plant exchange. (Hmmm.... the possibilities are interesting!)