Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mini ponds are 'tiny universes' of biodiversity for gardens and windowsills

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–55 of 55 posts

Re: Mini ponds are 'tiny universes' of biodiversity for gardens and windowsills

#51

Post by nightowl_games »

aidos wrote: post #48
nightowl_games wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've read, winterizing your pond and making it healthy enough for fish to survive the winter is difficult. Did you find it challenging? Many failures?

We inherited a couple of ponds when we bought our place 4 years back. One has fish in. To our surprise, every winter the pond freezes over and the fish are fine come spring. In fact they’re thriving and we don’t touch the pond at all - it doesn’t even have a pump. The other pond could definitely do with cleaning out, but again it’s teaming with wildlife. There’s not a huge window between when the newts leave for the…

How far north are you?

Re: Mini ponds are 'tiny universes' of biodiversity for gardens and windowsills

#52

Post by nightowl_games »

ilamont wrote: post #26
nightowl_games wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've read, winterizing your pond and making it healthy enough for fish to survive the winter is difficult. Did you find it challenging? Many failures?

It wasn't hard at all as long as the pond is deep enough per my earlier comments and the fish are not freshwater tropicals (we've had comets, shibunkin, and koi make it through without any issue, including deep freezes of 10F/-10C lasting a week or two). Keep the pump on all winter for oxygen. Remove the taro to a filled bucket and stick it on a sunny shelf inside. Once the temp drops below 40 degrees F (~5C) the fis…

I live in Saskatchewan, where it hovers around -40C for a couple weeks in January/February. Ive heard the pumps can take a beating here, but it's interesting to hear your success story.

Re: Mini ponds are 'tiny universes' of biodiversity for gardens and windowsills

#53

Post by uslic001 »

Our Koi pond attracts lots of wildlife. Birds, insects, frogs, toads, snakes, and turtles in addition to the Koi fish. The frogs are deafening at night. We love it and are going to put a larger one in at our retirement hobby farm that we are building.

Re: Mini ponds are 'tiny universes' of biodiversity for gardens and windowsills

#54

Post by aidos »

nightowl_games wrote: post #51
aidos wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We inherited a couple of ponds when we bought our place 4 years back. One has fish in. To our surprise, every winter the pond freezes over and the fish are fine come spring. In fact they’re thriving and we don’t touch the pond at all - it doesn’t even have a pump. The other pond could definitely do with cleaning out, but again it’s teaming with wildlife. There’s not a huge window between when the newts leave for the…

How far north are you?

South east England.

Re: Mini ponds are 'tiny universes' of biodiversity for gardens and windowsills

#55

Post by IncreasePosts »

uslic001 wrote: post #53

Our Koi pond attracts lots of wildlife. Birds, insects, frogs, toads, snakes, and turtles in addition to the Koi fish. The frogs are deafening at night. We love it and are going to put a larger one in at our retirement hobby farm that we are building.

Are you blogging or otherwise posting anywhere about your experience building the hobby farm? Just curious because it is something I'm planning on doing too!
Post reply on HN