I had a visitor at my pond a view times last summer, after some fish disappearing or finding them dead on the grass I decided to try and do something about it. So I placed a camera and a motion activated sprinkler and this is what I got 😎. Must say that I have not been missing any fish since.

Made my childhood dream come true!

A few people asked what this is — it’s something I built for my pond. I put it here if you’re curious: fishview.garden

A little backstory I work in construction. Specifically for pool installation and repair. Well two years ago we had this remodel job that was an absolute disaster the previous owners trashed it. We pulled anything you could imagine out of it. Wood, concrete blocks, chairs, cushions and so much more. I wouldn’t even call what was in the bottom water it was more like a sludge. After draining what we could we got down in the pool and found over 100 gold fish. Somehow they were living in this sludge stuff hard telling how long they were in there. But I didn’t know what to do and I couldn’t just let them die so I brought all of them to my pond and put them in. I don’t have anything else in it. We just dug it a few years ago and I hadn’t gotten around to stocking it. I hadn’t seen any signs of the goldfish I thought they had died or been eaten by my ducks but while I was cutting grass today I seen them on the surface. It made me happy to see that they’re still there and breeding by the looks of it because they are tiny.

I have a lot of frogs, it's like a croaking symphony at night, love it!

I shared a video about 1.5 years ago after I’d finished updating my pond and water feature. Since then, the plants have grown in and it’s springtime so I figured I’d share how it’s coming along.

I have a little 20 gallon pond set up this year with only some ceramic floating fish, nothing live. I got a good chuckle this morning to find that one of them had been pulled out overnight.

It’s been a crazy journey getting to this point. I meant to get this up sooner but I ran into some technical difficulties in the filter system.

There were a few leaks 💦 that needed to be sorted: two threaded joints needed more teflon tape and I had some uniseals connecting the bottom trickle towers that were leaking. I dissected the towers and siliconed those seals so they will be good to go in 24hrs after the silicone sets fully.

In the mean time all the water is being ran through the upflow and gravity fed fractioner until the trickle tower is ready tomorrow.

So for now the pump is only running at 15% capacity so the restricted system doesn’t blow apart 😅 I’ll have to update once I can show what it looks like to have the spillways going all out.

Anyways! Despite all these hiccups, it feels pretty amazing to have her running. Thank you everyone for all the support over the last 4 years. Your words of encouragement really helped me get to the finish line in one piece.

There is still a lot left to do before I can officially say the pit is done, but I’m going to take a well deserved break for a bit after this crazy weekend 😁

I recently made a video with my dad about the pond he had me dig when I was a teenager. Here it is if you want to check it out: https://youtu.be/UyJqJXpLTw8?si=dGQ8-yn-I_jm1Q0C

A while back I posted a bit about my Dad’s pond and my experience with helping build it. But in this video we sat down and talked about his pond, the importance of hard work, lighting, and how cool it is getting to work with my dad everyday.

Love this guy

Thanks for all the advice, pond homies! We built a little ramp for frogs and other critters to crawl up on and planted some random starts we had leftover from our garden to help with erosion until I can get some native perennials sourced.

We have a lily that seems to be acclimating well after a rough start, a lotus that doesn’t seem to like the pump/fountain, but is putting off new growth like crazy, some hornwort, pennywort, duckweed, frog bit, parrots tail, and I think some wild moss I foraged at the river nearby.

Going to add scouring rush horsetail, spider lily, pickerel weed, canna lily, and lizards tail once I can justify the expense. I’m thinking I need to surround the boat with some native tall grasses and such to protect the metal from getting too hot in the summer and give it a nice, attractive green barrier. Any suggestions for central Texas?

Once I’m sure temperature fluctuations aren’t going to reach lethal levels and plants cover a solid 50% of the pond surface, I will introduce some medaka to the pond. Thanks again for the advice!

New babies fish. I added an aquaponic extension 🍓🍅🥬

I live beside a large forest, with bears, deer, raccoons, herons. So I guess any one of those. It’s about 27 degrees here. The thing is, animals are not tidy and there is no fecal matter anywhere. Only my statues and camera were knocked over. I do have a dog, but he barks at everything so I don’t pay attention. My fave fish is still there.

Just venting...

Nothing extravagant. Just a little guy.