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.
