Standing by my pool/pond this morning I could see lots of life. The water has just about recovered - most of the green is gone and I can see what is occurring in the water. There are less tadpoles, and the reason was soon obvious.The little frogs are leaving the water. On one plant there were 11 of the little cuties! I don't yet know what they are, so I have requested help from a froggy web site.
You can see the stump of his tadpole tail still.
One froglett was being eaten alive by the larva of a water creature. Joe thinks it is a water beetle larva. We will grow it out if we can to see what it is. Nearby another drama was just as gruesome - a brilliant blue dragonfly was caught in a spider web and the spider was in the act of disabling it.
Meanwhile large red dragonflies were mating, and the fish (blue eyes) were chasing each other with the males displaying their colourful fins. Maybe they were mating - but surely they are thinking about it!
The usual three baby water dragons were sunning themselves on the rocks. They are there every day and they have grown significantly since we first saw them. They seem to be catching ants and other small insects around the pool.
The weather has cooled off and it isn't so inviting to go swimming now. One of the things I like about this set up is that during winter when a pool lies idle, still costing, the pond/natural pool continues to have loads of interest. And this costs only about $340 per year to run - much less than a chemical swimming pool.
Thank you for this amazing blog!
ReplyDeleteI am trying to make a NSP in Southern Spain, but I have an important question that I have not been able to solve even with the books I purchased. It is about the substrate where you actually plant the plants. My plan is: gravel, pipes, gravel, thinner gravel, geotextile, substrate where the roots will be placed, geotextile, gravel. My question is: what kind of substrate did you use for the place where you placed the roots? I am more or less confident with the other layers, but I have serious doubts about that layer between the geotextiles, where I will put the roots of my plants.
Thanks a lot!
I think it depends on the kind of plant. Some plants require fertilizer - so for those plants - water Lilly, lotus, bull rush, we have planted into pots and sealed the soil and fertilizer tablets from the water with a layer of sand or clay over the top of the soil. The pots should have no holes in them. We have the pots sitting on the gravel over the filter system. Other plants are planted in the gravel of the filter system -these are the low nutrient types such as potogometon, hair grass, small aquarium plants, foxtail. These plants have no soil. Then we have an area on the large step. This is not part of the filter system. Here we have enclosed it with geote tile on the bottom and sides, filled it with ordinary garden soil, and " sealed" the top with sand and gravel. Here the plants are planted into the soil. as you can see from this blog the pool did go green for a few days but has now recovered and the water is clear.
ReplyDelete