Comments for The Garden Pond Blog

Comment on A message from the Secretary of State for the Environment…. by Flying Ants

Flying Ants — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 02:56:22 +0000

I hope you’re right. My feeling is though it’s all a lot of window dressing. Listening to her, she sounded just like a politician without a clue of the reality.

The only way to really make a change is for people themselves to start to value these things and do stuff…not a lot of little films waffling on about ‘the big society’ approach.

Eg. let’s see programmes on tv that look at creating ecosystems in gardens. Not programmes that are either aimed at gardeners, ie plant lovers or nature programmes aimed at animal lovers.

Unless people themselves, in general, really start to care and properly understand about the issues, not just the very, very few that belong to special interest groups, it’s not going to make much difference.

For a start we need a dictatorship that bans decking and ornamental plants and give tax breaks to everyone building a garden pond in their back garden

Comment on Perfect ponds 1: the tadpole shrimp pond by More pond wildlife in the news today « The Garden Pond Blog

More pond wildlife in the news today « The Garden Pond Blog — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:07:18 +0000

[...] I’ve featured the Solway site before. [...]

Comment on The dead frog pond by Jeremy Biggs

Jeremy Biggs — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:48:16 +0000

Hi Judith

Try contacting Froglife who have been running the Frog Mortality Project, with the Zoological Society of London, for some years.

I’d be interested to hear how you get on.

There is advice on the Froglife website – but if you can’t find what you want let me know and we’ll see if we can talk to the people actually doing the testing.

Jeremy

Comment on The dead frog pond by Judith

Judith — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:29:05 +0000

Dead frogs in summer (or winter) was something I had never encountered in 20 years of having a garden pond her in N Kent, until last summer when after a very sucessful breeding season when 200+ frogs returned, I found at least 50 dead ones from July to September in and around the pond.
I assumed this to be an outbreak of the virus that has been around since the 80s, but had up to then never affected my ponds.
I tried in vain to find really useful advice about what to do about this, and whether to start again with a new pond, but nobody was able to tell me whether this virus was only carried by frogs, or whether it was in the water/mud/or transmitted by any other means.
I did empty the pond, rebuilt and relined it, but put back all the silt, pondweed and pondlife that had overwintered in holding tanks. About 40 frogs returned, spawned and I had masses of tadpoles, but now the dead ones are appearing again. Some large, some this years tadpoles. I am desperate to know what, if anything I can do about this. The newts and other life seem unaffected as last year. Does anyone have any really useful advice to give? Does anyone know if the Frog Mortality project is still going?
Incidentally my ponds have always been topped up with 50:50 rain water and tap water, and have very dense oxygenating weed and are from 10 – 60 cm deep. Frogs thrived in my garden for 19 years.
Shall I just give up and accept it is a good pond for everything except frogs now? I would really appreciate hearing from anyone else who has had this problem.

Comment on Ice and oxygen: the end of the story (for now) by Jeremy Biggs

Jeremy Biggs — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 08:35:15 +0000

In answer to Brian….

What happened to you happened to a lot of other people last winter – which as I’m sure you know was one of the worst we’d have for a while.

In our ponds we measured oxygen and that was clearly implicated in deaths of fish and frogs. Frogs are happy at low dissolved oxygen levels in the cold but can only stand a few days with no oxygen. Goldfish tolerate zero oxygen for longer but even they succumb eventually.

So far we haven’t measured the other ‘toxic gases’: ammonia, methane, CO2 – so can’t rule them out completely. However, these will often be kept in check when there is oxygen about – so the rise of these gases will probably coincide with lack of oxygen.

It looks like when ponds are reasonably well-oxygenated in winter there should be few deaths of pond animals.

But it’s important to say that we are far from knowing all the details of this problem at the moment.

Jeremy

Comment on Topping up problems and tadpoles by Jeremy Biggs

Jeremy Biggs — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 08:26:48 +0000

Hi Christine

It wasn’t quite clear. Are they still dying? Let me know, and I’ll come back with some suggestions – though I’m not sure its going to be possible to give a definitive answer.

Jeremy

Comment on Topping up problems and tadpoles by christine taylor

christine taylor — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 08:22:26 +0000

We have a small pond in our garden (Widnes Cheshire) it was full of tadpoles, but I noticed last week a lot of them had died. I emptied the pond and removed all the dead ones but I filled the pond up with tap water. But what could have caused them to die in the first place. I look every day and they are still dying??

Comment on Ice and oxygen: the end of the story (for now) by brian

brian — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 22:35:31 +0000

I read with interest your article on oxygen levels in frozen ponds. Although in your tests this may have been the case what happened with other chemical levels? Did the toxins inncrease also because they could not be vented to the ait or did these drop? The reason I ask this is because I put a pond into my garden last year (april time) and it established a good selection of wildlife inhabitants quite quickly. It had also a waterfall fed from a pump thrrough a uvbiological filter. The pond is about 2.5m x 1.5m maximum and was doing very well up until late autumn when I started having problems with the pump so I turned it off at the beginning of winter thinking it was not necessary. At this time most of the plants started dying back leaving very little to grow through the winter. As you know we had a very severe winter and when the pond froze over I broke the ice as recommended. On one occasion when the weather was particularly bad I could not easily break the ice. This lasted for several days and eventually the ice was just too thick even by pouring boiling water onto it. Once the thaw finished and I started preparing the pond for the coming spring I noticed there was about 30 frogs and even some of the fish dead in the pond. Not frozen in the ice but lower in the bottom and between plant pots etc. The only conclusion I could come to was the toxins built up because of the ice cover over a prolonged period. Do you agree or could there be any other reason? I have not had any more die since and there are frogs, newts and fish in it now.

Comment on How to make a really good wildlife pond (3): the pictures by Jeremy Biggs

Jeremy Biggs — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 22:03:12 +0000

Hi Mary – I’ll be interested to hear how you get on. If there’s any advice I can give, let me know. Jeremy

Comment on How to make a really good wildlife pond (3): the pictures by Mary

Mary — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 21:51:54 +0000

Hi Jeremy
Very interesting blogs here – I am in the process of overseeing my friend’s new pond. I had two previous very successful ponds in Essex. Now live in south of Ireland in Co Cork. I used builder’s dpm for both previous ponds and as long as it isnt exposed to light, there were no problems at all. We had newts, frogs and toads as well as all the flying insects attracted to the oasis. I was very upset when my former next door neighbour told me the people who bought my house had filled in the pond!! I am going to make a pond in my own garden this year as there are none in the vicinity – a slow flowing river is a stone’s throw from my garden and I miss frogs and news and watching the birds taking a bath in the shallows.