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Just remembered, I did a video about making the pond. Includes clips of the fish under the ice.

Do you find any wild animals (raccoons) eat the fish? Also any opinions on floating plants (water hyacinth, water lettuce, frogbit) instead of Taro? I built a pond and put in a soft PVC liner instead of one of those preformed ones. I had it out for a summer expecting frogs but they didn't show. Mosquitos did tho.

See my reply upthread regarding raccoons and herons. We have tried all kinds of water plants, including fishweed, water hyacinth, water lillies and tiny little floating green plants that I have scooped from the nearby river and marsh. None of them survive, likely because it’s such a shady spot on the north side of the house and there’s very little direct sunlight, except in the morning. the only thing that does consistently well is the taro plant. It actually tries to self propagate but we don’t have enough space for another water pot.

Regarding mosquitoes: this is not standing water, because of the pump which goes year-round. I also believe the fish will eat most bugs and any larvae that start to form. they seem to be constantly hungry. Except in the fall and winter.

I'm not the person you're replying to, but I have a pond too.

Mosquito dunks are one way to deal with mosquito larvae without resorting to a conventional pesticide. Another is to have some kind of fish. Mosquito fish are probably best. I think koi/goldfish tend to eat them too.

https://summitchemical.com/products/mosquito-dunks/

Taro needs to be moved indoors for the winter if you're in a cold climate. Water hyacinth and water lettuce also don't survive winter. I don't think frogbit does, but regardless apparently it's considered invasive where I am (Oregon) so the pond/garden supply places don't sell it anymore.

Azolla (aka fairy moss or mosquito fern) can survive the winter. It turns red when it freezes, but it starts multiplying again when it warms up.

Cattail and hardy water lily can regrow from the roots. Same with water clover.

Duckweed is similar to azolla, but does not survive in winter. If you buy water plants, you may end up with duckweed that went along for the ride.

We had a lotus, it came back after one winter, but didn't survive the next. (Our last spring was very wet and cold, and lotus apparently like hot weather and sun.)

Incidentally, if anyone reading this is in the general vicinity of the Willamette valley, I highly recommend visiting Hughes Water Gardens in Wilsonville if you get the chance. It's a plant nursery, but they sell mostly aquatic plants, and also pond supplies and koi.

> Also any opinions on floating plants (water hyacinth, water lettuce, frogbit) instead of Taro

Different category. Taro is a marginal, it adds \vspace. Can be substituted by Iris or Pontederia.

Avoid water hyacinth and water lettuce in small ponds. They will conquer all the surface and became a nuissance. They also will block you from watching the fishes.

> Mosquitoes

The worse ones dislike moving waters, this problem can be alleviated if you use a pump to move the water at a regular interval. Take in mind that water lilies dislike also moving water so you need to choose

I'm a novice when it comes to this, so apologies for the dumb question. Can you explain how you manage the taro plant? Like how can it grow in a pot completely submerged then be brought inside? Can taro be both grown partially submerged and out of water? Thanks for the info.

I’m not sure if it’s the same taro, but people grow it in the ground here in New Zealand.

Google taro water garden, and you will see many results, including instructional videos for this plant. We purchased the taro plant from a garden supply store that sold us the plastic liner. This was more than 10 years ago. This species of taro can live in partially submerged pots, and we still have it planted in the original pot. The plant tries to self propagate in the late summer sending out little runners with leaves attached but it can’t root anywhere because there is no shallow muddy spots by our pond. It’s just the plastic liner which drops off to about 2 feet at the edge of the plastic. On the other side of the hard plastic liner is ordinary soil, which is not wet enough for the taro, but other plants, including ferns and ground cover take root there and grow over the edge of the plastic liner as shown in the video below.

https://youtu.be/8ExfrhjpMp4

I have a taro plant that I bring inside in the winter. Basically, I just transfer the pot to a large tub of water, where it can be mostly submerged.

I let the water level get pretty low last winter so only the bottom few inches of the pot were in water. It didn't do well and almost died, but over the summer in the pond it multiplied quite a bit and we could have had half a dozen taro plants if I wanted to plant all the runners.

Many robust aquatic plants are aquatic only for a while. They evolved to respond to flooding and to stand dry spells. You can just put the pot inside and treat it as any other indoor plant. You could probably just let it dry in winter. Colocasia can be cultured in water and also out of the water.

Pleasantly surprised to see the promised "small" ponds are indeed small.

None of these animals which come to drink water do not try to eat fish ?

Raccoons do, by scooping (they do not like to stand in the water or swim). The pond has deep areas and we put broken pots and cinder blocks so fish can hide. We also get darker fish which are harder for predators to see. Certain local bird species such as herons do too, but they won’t come under low tree canopy or near the house.

> Raccoons do, by scooping (they do not like to stand in the water

That’s funny, because out here (California) the raccoons will take other food to the water and stand in it while eating. They stand on the steps of pools and dunk their food - presumably to wash it off - between nibbles.

Quite funny to see, and leaves some hilarious paw prints if your pool isn’t clean.

It’s possible the pond is too deep (shallowest area is about 8 inches). We have a security camera, which sometimes catches them at night frantically pawing in the water from the edge of the pond to try to catch the fish. But they never go in.

By the way, the French word for raccoon is "raton laveur" which means "washing rat-like-thing". So it looks like they're supposed to wash their food indeed.

The german word is "Waschbär". As you may guess, that translates to "wash bear".

The dutch word is "wasbeer". As you may guess, that translates to "wash bear".

The austrian word is also "Waschbär". As you may guess, that translates to "wash bear" too.

I wonder how the german speaking swiss call it?

I haven't had a problem with it yet, but that's not to say I won't.

One suggestion (which I didn't follow) is to make sure the whole pond is at least a couple feet deep everywhere. Having shallow ledges just gives herons a convenient place to stand while they depopulate the pond of aquatic animals.

I wanted a place to set potted water plants though.

We did have an incident with a red-tail hawk. I was out chatting with one of the roommates by the pond when it lands nearby, and promptly catches and eats a snake.

The hawk was acting weird and not flying away, so we called up the Audubon society. They said if it looked injured we could try to catch it and bring it in to their office, so we donned welding gloves and every other available kind of PPE and chased it through the bushes and blackberry thickets of three properties before we finally caught it.

Fun fact: hawks are pretty docile when you cover their heads. We expected a fight and try to bite our fingers off but when we got a towel over it's head it pretty much just gave up and we stuffed it in a box and hauled it to Audubon. I'm not sure what happened to it after that; they probably kept it for a week or two and released it once its apparently injured wing was healed. It was an interesting day.

Yep, but fishes will reproduce also until finding some equilibrium. Koi ponds need special needs but non-fish ponds are a very good choice and much better for wildlife.