# El Natural saved me so much $$



## sb483 (May 29, 2006)

Hi all,
I just found this place and registered. Some years back I bought Ecology of the Planted Aquarium and tore down my 34 gallon tank to start over with a soil underlayer. I've never seen healthier fish in any of my tanks before; vals and livebearers thrived together in that tank for a long, long time. I've since bought a 55 gallon tank and set up a pond in my backyard, all in the same style.
Maybe I'll post some photos later, but for now I'll just describe the setups.

The pond is no-maintenance -- there are >20 comets (and plenty of young), and beyond the first month some 4 yrs back I've _never _seen any green algae or duckweed (the deep end is 6' with lilies of various colors).

The 55 gal had only a heater attached to it. That's it; no filter, just plants and gouramis (which like still water anyway). To make up for no water circulation, the tank received plenty of hours of sunlight and was full of amazon swordplants. The only maintenance was trimming the swords when they overcrowded. A few (opaline) gouramis were born in that tank.

Recently I had to tear down the two tanks because the floor was getting redone. All the fish went into the pond, still a zero-upkeep setup, and I'm starting both tanks over with different plants. Maybe I'll post some photos of these as they progress.

The El Natural style rocks


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## DataGuru (Mar 11, 2005)

Neat. no filters. 

So how big is the pond?


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## sb483 (May 29, 2006)

DataGuru said:


> So how big is the pond?


No clue. It's a figure-eight shape. About 4' wide. Around 13' long. For a pond that small it's pretty deep: the deep end is 6', and shallow end is like 4' to 5'. No idea how to convert that to gallons (equivalent 'tank estimates' are probably way off).

It looks pretty nice right now, all the lilies are starting to blossom. And of course, no electrical anything, no water movement, and a soil underlayer. Lilies get so big in soil (rather than pots) that it's only May and they're already starting to overcrowd.


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## Skelley (Mar 4, 2006)

i am so jealous. i can't wait to get out of my apartment and have a house with a good backyard. i am reading an amazing book on japanese gardening. i am looking forward to having a pond. can i ask were you live? are you able to keep your fish out year round?


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## sb483 (May 29, 2006)

Skelley said:


> i am so jealous. i can't wait to get out of my apartment and have a house with a good backyard. i am reading an amazing book on japanese gardening. i am looking forward to having a pond. can i ask were you live? are you able to keep your fish out year round?


New Jersey. In winter the top freezes over, but the pond is so deep the fish have plenty of space to rest near the bottom (goldfish go into an inactive state in winter, and start getting more and more active as it warms up).

And here are some pics (you can see a goldfish near the bottom of the last photo):





































You can see why I have really no idea how many fish are in here. Before the plants grow, the water's so muddy you can't see anything. The water only clears up when the lily pads cover the whole pond.


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## javalee (May 8, 2006)

Oooooo! Pretty! Are you sure those photos didn't come out of a botanical garden!! I even love the little flowers creeping around the rocks outside the pond (is it oaxala or violet wood sorrel?). What is the upright growing plant with the spear-shaped leaves?

What a gorgeous, healthy pond and garden! I can see that the water is crystal clear beneath all the plants. I had no idea you could keep fish outdoors year round up there. That's some great system you've got going. I'm going to share these photos with my mother. I'm trying to convert her to a "natural" pond keeper so she no longer has to look at green, mucky water. Thanks for sharing!


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## sb483 (May 29, 2006)

javalee said:


> Oooooo! Pretty! Are you sure those photos didn't come out of a botanical garden!! I even love the little flowers creeping around the rocks outside the pond (is it oaxala or violet wood sorrel?). What is the upright growing plant with the spear-shaped leaves?
> 
> What a gorgeous, healthy pond and garden! I can see that the water is crystal clear beneath all the plants. I had no idea you could keep fish outdoors year round up there. That's some great system you've got going. I'm going to share these photos with my mother. I'm trying to convert her to a "natural" pond keeper so she no longer has to look at green, mucky water. Thanks for sharing!


Thanks. Next time I take a photo I'll put Walstad's book on a rock to prove it ; )
I have absolutely no idea what those land plants are called (common or taxonomic), but the marginal plant is arrowhead (sagittaria latifolia) and you can see some corkscrew rush (juncus effusus 'Spiralis') next to it.

It's absolutely amazing, how the pond receives sunlight for most of the day and there's never any green algae at all. The water lilies are the ones keeping it away -- maybe outcompeting it, or maybe the water is loaded with the alleochemicals the lilies have been secreting for the past 4 years.


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## Piscesgirl (Feb 25, 2004)

How did you build the pond? Is there a liner in there and dirt on top?


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## javalee (May 8, 2006)

I'm sold on the arrowhead! I'll have to talk my mother into buying some for her pond. Really spectacular, your water garden!


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## sb483 (May 29, 2006)

Piscesgirl said:


> How did you build the pond? Is there a liner in there and dirt on top?


Crudely. Some guy came and dug out the hole, high-grade liner was placed over it, and it was filled with water. Then some of the topsoil was shovelled back into the pond. Dropped in paper grocery bags filled with more soil, planted lilies, and rocks for weight. Eventually the paper bags disintegrated and the lilies had the whole bottom surface. These first few months were the only time I'd ever seen green algae in this pond; ever since, it's either muddy (in winter) or clear (when the lilies are growing).

The comet on the left is actually white with a red top:








More fish:








As promised above ; )


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## Jane in Upton (Aug 10, 2005)

its lovely!

One question - if your Gouramis from the aquariums are now in the pond, how are you going to get them out before winter? They're tropical.

I'll bet having the pond so deep provides some temperature regulation, too. 

Really Lovely!
-Jane


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## sb483 (May 29, 2006)

I think putting them in the pond is the most humane method of euthanizing them I had available. Livebearers are cheap, and the children gouramis had none of the beautiful patterns on the original opaline gouramis (they just ended up standard spot-gouramis). So I couldn't sell them or give them away, and I didn't want to just drop them in a river (because it's not legal), so I dropped them in the pond instead. If they survive till winter, they'll die naturally then -- certainly more naturally than dying of contamination in a 10-gallon holding tank for months while the floor is redone.


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## sb483 (May 29, 2006)

I thought I'd share some new pics of the lilies in my pond (again, this is a naturalistic pond, no filters, no water movement, no electrical anything, just a soil bottom, lilies, and goldfish swimming around). It's also _way _overcrowded.:grouphug:









This one's called a "color-changing" lily; nothing too dramatic, just from white to yellow to slightly crimson as the flower "dies":








One of the prettier varieties:


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## bpimm (Jun 12, 2006)

sb483 said:


> No clue. It's a figure-eight shape. About 4' wide. Around 13' long. For a pond that small it's pretty deep: the deep end is 6', and shallow end is like 4' to 5'. No idea how to convert that to gallons (equivalent 'tank estimates' are probably way off).
> 
> It looks pretty nice right now, all the lilies are starting to blossom. And of course, no electrical anything, no water movement, and a soil underlayer. Lilies get so big in soil (rather than pots) that it's only May and they're already starting to overcrowd.


using your measurements as the averages, it is about 2000 Gallons.

Brian


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## sb483 (May 29, 2006)

bpimm said:


> using your measurements as the averages, it is about 2000 Gallons.
> 
> Brian


Thanks! Probably under 2000 because of the soil layer and the rounded (convex: *U*) bottom floor.


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## dwalstad (Apr 14, 2006)

Your pond is really beautiful. Thank you for posting the photos.


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## skylsdale (Jun 2, 2004)

> The water lilies are the ones keeping it away -- maybe outcompeting it, or maybe the water is loaded with the alleochemicals the lilies have been secreting for the past 4 years.


Or they could simply be providing enough shade that algae doesn't get enough light to really take off.  Good work.


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## sb483 (May 29, 2006)

Thanks, if you or anyone else at this forum has a naturalistic pond I'd love to see & hear more about it (there's a recent thread devoted to just this topic).
I don't know if it's the shade -- the pond gets more sunlight than anything, and days after it was filled in the water was like pea soup. Lily pads started covering the pond, and one day the water started getting clearer. This was the last time I'd ever seen green water in this pond; every year since then, it's muddy until lily pads half-cover it, after which it turns very clear. Even with all that sun and all those nutrients, the water no longer turns green.
(besides, as I saw in my 55-gallon recently green water algae doesn't really _need _much sunlight to take off)


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## Matt S. (Nov 3, 2005)

Your natural pond is beautiful. Certainly an inspiration for others to try such an approach. I always imagined you need a big filter on a pond to keep it oxygenated and clean but make your pictures make rubish of that notion. 

Do you have to top it up in summer, or does rainfall generally keep pace with evaporation?

Matt


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## sb483 (May 29, 2006)

I don't ever top it off, it's so deep (6' at its deepest point!) for such a narrow pond that evaporation doesn't really take that much off.

The fish appear to be camera-shy this morning:









One problem with not trimming these plants is, by July it starts looking more like a bog garden than a pond:








*edit*: That reminds me of a story when the pond was first set up, and deer came and ate half of the lilies. Then the fence around it was set up. _One day after _the fence was built, the deer came back, stepped over, and ate the other half. Now that the lilies are finally overcrowding, why don't those deer ever come back!?[smilie=c:


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## Matt S. (Nov 3, 2005)

With a scrumptious pond like that it is a mystery why the deer don' t want to eat it anymore. I'm thinking that if you scale it up a bit maybe you'll find a moose in it one morning.


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## Minipol (Jul 4, 2006)

Super nice pond !!!
Looks very good. 

In order to calculate the volume, you can divide complex shapes into 2 or more simpler shapes. In your case that would mean a figure 8 is essentialy 2 circles.
To calculate your pond volume: Length X Width X Average Depth X 7.5 = Gallons
I went by your measurments and this is what i got:

If you draw 2 circles on paper next to each other and measure
the length & width you specified (13' by 4'), the diameter of a circle is roughly
somewhere between 4 and 6.5 (13'/2) so on average, let's take 5.25 (4+6.5/2)
That makes the radius 5.25/2 = 2,625
3.14 (Pi) x 2,6' radius x 2,6' radius x 5' (avg. depth) x 7.5 = 795,99 gallons.
That's for 1 circle. So for 2 circles that's about 1591,98 gallons total volume
That's a pretty decent volume for a pond !

It will probably be a bit less.
If you can measure the 2 circles more accurate, we can calculate the volume more accurately


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## sb483 (May 29, 2006)

Thanks!
I'm wary of calculating the true volume of this pond. The deep end (the upper circle in the figure-8 shape) is sorta egg-shaped, so I would need the volume of ellipsoid formula (4/3 * pi * a*b*c times 1/2 for the _lower _eggshell), and the shallow end is... I dunno. The digger ran into a cable, so its partially egg-shaped, but the egg has been *sheared *a bit.
After making lots of approximations to simplify things, I have no idea how much accuracy is left.



Minipol said:


> Super nice pond !!!
> Looks very good.
> 
> In order to calculate the volume, you can divide complex shapes into 2 or more simpler shapes. In your case that would mean a figure 8 is essentialy 2 circles.
> ...


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## Minipol (Jul 4, 2006)

Well like i said, it's an approximation but you will have an idea of the general volume of your pond. Now you can already say it's in the 1500 ish range


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