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Wildlife pond advice please
hartleyhare
Posts: 81
I need some advice about my pond please. Its been set up for 3 weeks now and the apart from the water looking quite stagnant I'm having some other problems with it. I added a water soldier last week. It was healthy when I put it in but within a couple of days it looked as if it was dying ( its now in my raised pond trying to recover ). Most of the frogbit I put in has also failed as did most of the starwort. The watercress however is growing 
. I think the water mint is ok but only put it in last week. Any thoughts on this and how to resolve it please?
I'm going to buy some more oxygenators. At present there are 2 bunches of milfoil. What else can I try?
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In practice it is very difficult to 'balance' a tiny pond - the water heats up in the warm weather and loses oxygen - I know you're not supposed to have them in wildlife ponds, but I think you need some mechanical means of oxygenating the water.
I'd try a little pump to circulate some water and get it to trickle onto a largeish that sticks out of the water, so that the water picks up some oxygen - we once had one that we'd rigged up so that the water trickled out through the spout of an old standpipe onto a sloping piece of slate at the edge of the sink.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Try Daphnia, they are filter feeders and graze on the algae and bacteria as do water louse. Once the watercress takes off it should start to improve, but too much sun and the algae takes over, a bit of shade is needed.
Thanks for the advice both
The pond is actually in shade for a large part of the day.
We had rain overnight and this morning and the water in the sink has turned clear, really clear.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.