Today is day 10 since the start of the filling of the pool. The water is very clear, but as you can see from the photo the overall effect is green. The green colour is the biofilm which has formed on all of the surfaces. This is a green algae. I'm not sure whether this is the colour it will remain or whether a brown algae will over take the green one. we could vacuum the film away, but for now we will leave it be. Hopefully the same thing is happening inside the filter. technically we could remove it from the visible surfaces and still have the filter working properly. But we don't intend to do that. We want all of the life which will develop on the biofilm. This will form the basis of the ecosystem which we are wanting to develop.
There are tadpoles in there now, at least two species (Adelotus brevis and Limnodynastes sp). They are feeding on the biofilm. There are also larvae of a number of insects which I do not recognise, also in the biofilm.
The speckles on the bottom are tiny red worms which have built themselves a casing of vegetable matter. They are probably the larvae of a tiny fly or midge. This may or may not be a biting midge. They may well be the same genus as the blood worm fed to aquarium fish.This tells me it is time to add some fish to feast on all of this bounty. So today we went to the aquarium shop and bought 5 Pacific Blue Eyes. These are very small (1.5 cm) locally native fish which love to eat mosquito larvae but will not harm tadpoles. Perfect! The last I saw they sheltering under the lotus leaves.
While I was at the aquarium shop I bought more aquarium plants. The ones I planted after my last visit there have done very well. They have runners already so I have now added more species, in preparation for my underwater gardening exercise.
Last night I heard a calling toad. Joe went to investigate and caught 4 of the blighters! They didn't appear to be mating and there were no egg strings in the pool this morning so we may have got them in time. I had thought the toad mating season was over by now, so we hadn't finished the toad barrier that we have started. Now we will give it more urgency! I do NOT want toads in there.
Thank you Beryl, what a quick development; tropical speed!
ReplyDeleteYes, the biofilm has also developed inside the filters, the microscopic surface area of those filters is many times larger then the pool surface itself; that is the reason that your water stays clear from the beginning even with a great nutrient content of the filling water from your water tanks. If you would do the same without the bio filters you would have green water.
I love how you develop your own natural pool, without extra technology; so far it seems you have not even used your skimmer!
The filters keep the water clear all the time and it is now down to your personal sense and joy of your natural pool that will determine how much biofilm develops in the swimming area. The filters will accumulate over time more and more of the nutrients of the water body and the biofilm would become less and less in accordance to it. There are pools where you have almost no biofilm at all, nutrients and biofilm are always in balance. I'm very curious how it develops further. Do you have any filamentous/ string algae in the shallow planting area? I would expect some of them there unless the plants you have there are already to competitive to allow them there.
Thank you; what a joy to watch the development!
There is some filamentous algae on one plant that came from our other pond. This has increased over the last few days but is still very short. There is none in the shallow area otherwise. No we have not used the skimmer, nor have we vacuumed the bottom. There is some debris collecting on the bottom, but it doesn't worry us so far and we want to develop the insect and other fauna first. We will probably eventually cone around to vacuuming the bottom occasionally. We are swimming every day and also snorkeling - there is plenty to see!
ReplyDeletebeautiful!!
ReplyDeleteThere is no script on how often you use a skimmer or vacuum clean; it is entirely up to what kind of environemnt you like to develop.
Really nice to hear, that you enjoy your converted pool that much!