"Cichlidiot" wrote in message
...
In rec.ponds ~ Windsong ~ P@p wrote:
"Cichlidiot" wrote in message
...
Here's a potentially radical idea. How about tolerating the birds and
designing a way for them to gravitate towards the far more replaceable
fish (and less emotionally attached) than the expensive koi? The best
design I've seen so far is a deep, vertically flat sided pond fed by a
long, shallow stream/waterfall at a public koi pond.

To quote one of my favorite characters... "my, but we are in a mood
today". You do seem to be quite argumentative on this subject.

## Oh really? You're wrong. Do you always get so easily upset when someone
questions you?

I will make
this one attempt at reason, but any more such illogical replies such as
"if we were rich" will be summarily ignored.

## Ok, if we win the lottery or came into a large inheritance we can have
the experts come in and build your dream pond in our front yard.. After all
not everyone has an extra $10,000+ to spend on ponds as you seem to think
they do. Any such suggestions from you that they do will be summarily
ignored. )

The setup I described was not likely to have been expensive. It was part
of a public park that was set up and maintained completely by volunteers
and donations (and most of those volunteers were part of the 60+ club, so
I doubt they contributed much to the digging of the whole thing).

## Then why suggest this to a private pond owner? Not expensive for me?
Where would I get *donations* from? I would have to pay someone to come in
and redo the whole thing.

I was
not privy to the costs, but given these facts I doubt it was that much
more expensive than your standard pond and waterfall. The stream was not
some huge river as you seem to be thinking it was, just about 15-20 feet
long and no more than a foot deep leading from the waterfalls to the pond.

## And how much do they charge for your standard 2000 to 3000 gallon pond
and waterfall where you live? What did the liners alone cost? ONLY 15 to
20' stream? That "stream" liner marterial is another several hundred
dollars at least.

The labor may have been an issue given the age of many of the volunteers,

## Here again - where would we find all these volunteers? Paying for what
you suggest would easily run around $8,000 to $10,000 or more where we live.
The water pump alone for such a setup would be well into the $500 range.
And you call me argumentative? LOL!!! Not everyone on this list has that
kind of money.

but then it always is an issue when digging out a pond. The key here is to
think beforehand and plan. Just as it would not be wise to put the pond
where all the runoff collects, one should also consider the wildlife of
the area when designing the pond.

## Since I had never seen water snakes, bullfrogs, King Fishers or herons
closely (where we live) we never gave them a thought. We started before I
got online so all we had to go by were books.

$$ What stream? How long was the stream,? Herons do not want 1/2" fry
or
small crayfish. How did you keep mosquito fish in the stream and out of
the
pond itself?

What stream?

## The one you claimed was 15 to 20 feet long and full of fish for the
herons.

The one I keep describing here that you called expensive in
the previous paragraph. Do try to keep up dear. The fish were not forced
to remain anywhere. The mosquito fish and fry could also be found in the
main pond and waterfall pools as well as along the stream.

## Yes dear I am keeping up. You mentioned a stream, now you mention
waterfall pools. You're talking about a HUGE expensive system, not what
most people have in their yards.

Nothing
restricted their movement so they were found everywhere, although the ones
found in the pools were probably sucked up by the pump and deposited there
unless they did salmon impressions and jumped upstream.

## So they passed through the impeller without harm? Must be a new type of
pump.

$$ Mosquitoes do not breed in streams (moving water). I can't believe
you
managed to keep the fish in the stream for the herons, and out of your
pond. Did you have a net at the end of the stream? How large were the
mosquito fish?

The water was not fast moving, so there was plenty of opportunity for
mosquito larva to breed. Just as water based larva occasionally will get
into indoor tanks if breeding gnats or mosquitos make it indoors, the
movement of the stream was insufficient to take care of the larva in and
of itself. Refer to prior paragraph as for fish movement between stream
and pond.

## I see, so the water pump would suck them in and spit them back at the end
of the 15 to 20 foot stream that also fed waterfalls and pools.

$$ How did you keep the fish in the stream? And what about those of us
who
don't have $10,000+ to call in pond builders or don't have the space for
huge streams?

My, we are repetitive aren't we.

## My but you keep refusing to answer the question until now. I've seen
many ponds with streams in the past 9 years and never saw any of the fish go
UP the streams. They stayed in the pond itself whether there was a
waterfall or not.

This sort of language would get you
branded at the least excitable and at the worst a troll in another
newsgroup I visit.

## I couldn't care less about your other NGs since I am here. It's obvious
you think everyone has unlimited income to hire professionals to put in
ponds with 20' streams, special water pumps that do not harm fish,
waterfalls with pools, and then load them with mosquito fish to attract
herons away from their koi and GF. Would be nice if we all could afford
such a luxuries.... )

For the moment, I will leave it at "excitable" in my
mind, but the line is quickly becoming blurred.

## Killfile me! )
--
Carol.... the frugal ponder...
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