My Fish Nursery...

What a brilliant solution!

What a very interesting post, thank you.

What a very interesting post, thank you.

I also have many fry every year but most get eaten by the bigger fish. I usually gain 5-10 fish every year.

I dont tend to get many other predators. But you have a lovely solution to raising little ones.

How good is that, anyone can go and buy more fish but far more pleasure and satisfaction when raising your own, it would never have occurred to me to try and do that L'strife although I do rescue some of the frogspawn to stop it becoming a feast,I transfer it down to the bottom pond, I thought the newt had eaten all my tadpoles as I had not seen any for weeks, I 'm pleased to say a tiny frog was on a lilypad two days back, where there is one there's probably more, they are not likely to leave the pond whilst everywhere is so dry, I have both ponds covered all year round, not only to deter the heron's but also our two terriers and the cat population....
Really interesting and actually amazing blog and photo's....

Am I the only one who ' know what an airstone is? Will somebody explain and put me out of my misery please?

An air stone is a solid material which has micro pores in it. When air is pumped into it from a tube connected to a small air compressor, thousands of small bubbles are created resulting in a aquatic environment rich in oxygen. I will attach to this blog a picture of the air stone used in this pond as well as the air compressor...stay tuned..

Ok Stera, I have added the photos of the aeration system with explanation. I hope this helps. Please let me know if you have seen the addition to this blog

What a clever man you are Loosestrife!
I hope you haven't lost too many fish this year!
I could only dig out a small pond as we have clay soil here and due to my problems of poly myalgia, couldn't dig very low, but as you may have seen on one of my blogs, it is now a wild life pond.
I finished the pond this February, but it doesn't show any signs of life yet!
One of my friends said she would give me some frog spawn, but it was only in her pond a few days when it dropped to the bottom of the pond and disappeared!
Her daughter had a huge pond and had frogs as well as fish, but no frog spawn this year!
Would you know why?

I don’t know Rose. I have never had a year when they didn’t spawn. That little half keg that my Martian spitter is sitting in was filled to the brim with eggs which I had to remove and place them in the large frog pond. If you look through my photos section you will see a picture of a conga line of alternating male and female green frogs mating! I have heavy clay soil too so most of my planting has been done using the lasagna method. Since my winters here are very cold at times all of my ponds are 38 to 40 inches deep so any life they have can survive. After digging down 8-10 inches of clay soil top I hit solid red shale for the remainder which requires swinging a short handled 5lb pic-mattock to break up the shale so I can shovel it out. But I love to dig and do hard scape too and I am a very patient person so I was never in a rush to complete anything and this attitude kept me from hurting myself.

I could do with you here then Loosestrife! Haha!
I will have a look at your pictures!

loved this blog more plz