Back to report that pond life, such as it is, ebbs and flows.
Unfortunately, it was ebbing out of the pool into the space between the liner and the pit. We returned from Noosa to a pond-emergency, so guess what I’ve being doing in my “spare” time?
That’s right, not finishing my final 3000 word essay is what.
Step 1 was draining the pond. Extracting all six of the Gerrys (they’re all called Gerry) was more difficult, and I sandwiched one yellow Comet — I think it may have been Gerry — between a couple of heavy stones, but he/she/it survived.
They’d spend the next week in a big, blue bucket with an air stone but no filtration.
I pulled the old liner out and bailed as much water as I could. However, each morning, no matter how ’empty’ it was the night before, 10cm of water. Aha! It was seeping back into the pit from the surrounding yard!
Hugo, supervising as usual.
I cleaned and dried the old liner and inspected it for the suspect gash. No gash! I’d tested the filter and waterfall before I drained the pond, and they had seemed okay? A mystery! Even more mysterious were the Native Violets growing in the pit — ie no air or light??
Anyway, alien invasion aside, this was a chance to balance the water levels from front to back, so I improvised with a couple of pool noodles.
The old liner went in first (over the noodles) then a new liner over the top. Double glove. Always a good strategy! I lined the bottom with 50% black polished, and 50% natural unpolished cobbles, repositioned the submerged log, filter and light, and began to fill.
I checked for leaks at 50% capacity with the mini-bog filter and waterfall in full swing. A leak in the waterfall! Bastard! So I paused and fixed that (ie began from scratch) then filled it to the top. Test.
No leak!
I then filtered for 24 hours before returning the Gerrys. What happy little fishes they were! I would be too if I’d spent the past week swimming in my own shit.
Sore as ten bastards (one ‘bastard’ being an empirical measure for discomfort) I procured about 200kg of heavy river rocks for the pond edging and carted them home.
I fiddled and stacked heavy rocks, putting my Tetris skills to the test until my beloved was happy (enough) with the edge, then used natural organic soil to cement them in.
The final, incomplete steps will be to spread bark mulch after my wife has fixed the plantings. The idea it they will overhang into the pond eventually, and you’ll see no liner at all. Give it two years.
Do you think its an improvement on Pond Mk.1?
