Hamish

yeah sounds like the first one, and the second is what i know as a "frog" well as a kid anyway. thanks! ill go out sometime this week/end and get some pics of some.

Okay, i know its not the best asking this question without a picture of one, but i found this frog the other day and it was a nice bright looking green.. thought nothing of it as i know there are frogs in this stream/pond ive been visiting for a few years. then it came to me that by the time the tadpole grows into a frog, its should be alot bigger than this one was. it looked fully growen, had no sign of a "tadpole tail" etc.. just looked like a normal frog, but could almost fit on my thumb nail. now im not clued up on frogs at all, i kept them as a kid and ive grabbed them for live food for various species ive kept in the past.. but now im curious about this one, maybe a common species? i wouldnt have a clue about different species of frog.. so thats why this has me wondering.. the pond dosn't get accessed by anyone.. it just sits in the middle of nowhere playing the foodchain game.. but the pond is a little drive away, so not like i can go there "after work" or anything, heh. im keen to grab a couple now, ive kept some in the past and they were normal sized etc.. just this one was in a different place and could be a different species.. okay so thats all i can really say about it. (sorry for the ramble!) if someone would know what species it maybe from what little information i have about it, that'd be cool! thanks in advance.

well then i guess i wont be doing that, lol.

I was wondering the same thing, does that go for all nz native lizards? skinks etc? was going to go up the bush this weekend and looksie for some

Overnight the pond dropped 20cm, it happened lastyear (as the rivers get dryer the aquafer (sp) drops, and our natural spring looses it's "unf") so today we had decided that when our season is over and we have a bit of time we are going to empty the pond and concrete it, water features and such. So i have to read up on that, ive never made a concrete pond before, and i guess it isnt as easy as it seems. But there will definitly be a waterfall feature incorperated into it somewhere, not sure what else yet, maybe a platform? Will have to wait and see what we come up with. Also will be adding a sump plug type drain to make emptying/cleaning easier. And yeah jn the leave's do drop into the water, and they do attribute to the mass of decomposition on the bottom. I have grabed a few different types on plant from the river/stream nextdoor, but this algae has taken over and choked it all, im sure alot has been pulled out when we have been cleaning it. The planning starts.

Yeah alanmin, thats right. but it's which food to take away. Light or Nutrients? I dont have any fish/turtles in the pond at the moment, but there is cultures of boatmen, bloodworm, waterflea (atleast two different kinds) and cambosia (sp?), so im not keen on taking anything that will harm that away, therfore i think light, but then it ruin's the whole "scene" we are trying to create here. 60% of the pond is covered most of the day by two willow tree's on the NE side, But that is not enough. Shadecloth? it is do-able by all means, but then we have an obstruction hanging over one side of the pond. (that isnt "natural" i guess i could say) Nutrients? We have about 70-80 water lillies in there at the moment, and they have established themselves nicely too. So i dont really want to remove them just to treat the water as they are starting to contribute by taking up more of the nutrients everyday they grow. (maybe i dont need to remove them for treatment?) Now we had the digger in the far end is ALOT more plantable now, it all slopes in so its not just a straight drop into 1.2m deep. So more lillies are a definite go ahead, its just sourcing more which is the problem! (only another 200? (ish, for now.))

Hey, Thanks for the link! And unfortunately our lab dosn't have a microscope handy, and if we did i wouldnt be able to tell the differance between the types of algae anyway. I had asked the advice of a couple of fishkeepers and i was pointed in the direction of "blanketweed", as after visiting the local LFS the container of barley extract said "for the treatment of blanketweed etc" so i stuck with that for the description of the algae we have currently invading our pond. If you happen to be passing Hastings sometime carla feel free to come by our place and identify the strain of algae it really is. As you say it could help me in getting the correct treatment methods to solve this problem. Anyway, the boss got in today (while the mercury was popping up to 40C) and cleaned a good 80% of it (again.) And yes i know in three days it will be back, but the fact that it is starting to knock it down is a kind of satisfying, and it's not building up on the top of the water making it look like a sewage pond. Getting there! ~hamish

we have two 3y/o male red ears one 4y/o female red ear and one 10+y/o female red ear all in makeshift ponds untill the main pond is ready.

ah hah! i have one of those rush plants already planted in the pond, also as we were going arround the edges digging out the grass/weeds ther were a few young ones growing too. wasnt sure if it was a weed or a plant. out the back of our place there is a small river/stream which has heaps of that growing. might find a few jumping over the fence into our place. :oops:

not sure if cuddles and puddles here in Hastings have any, last time i was in they had two of them. (6+ months ago maybe) could try them i suppose.. sorry, not too much help. :oops:

Hey thanks for that, yeah we are looking for a bale of barley straw to do that. Umm i did start a thread about the pond, but i havent got arround to putting anything about it in there yet, i should do it.. really. its about 45-50m to walk arround (large steps, wild guess actually) had the digger in again this morning, to flatten out a few spots arround it and slope arround some of the edges so its more plantable. any more info about this nastey stuff would be cool@! other ways people have treated/delt with this stuff would be cool to hear about too Thanks again jn

it's spreading like crazy, the boss and i spent three hours today cleaning the stuff out, and still we didnt get half of it. we have two willow trees at the NE end of the pond, which since spring (budburst time) the algae under them has dropped down to nearly nothing (as the sunlight has) and the lillies (maybe only 70-80 plants) have taken off nicely, but no where near 70-80% of the pond is covered, maybe only 10%? im sure in two years or so the lillies will multiply, and take alot more of the nitrate out of the water. this is the first year for the plants in the pond, for the past 10-20 years it has just been a waterflea/bloodworm/boatmen breeding ground (hasnt been cleaned/had fish/been used as a pond so to speek). as it comes down to it, i have a big problem with this algae. is there anything on the market that will be okay to use to kill this stuff, that will not effect the lillies and culture's of live food in there? i have been told buy an old farmer that they used to use copper sulphate in the troughs to kill algae, and the cattle would be fine after drinking it. also we have some barley extract to throw into it what about all of those algaerid/clearalgae stuff for sale? anyone had any success with that stuff? we just need something that somebody has used, and works (in a large pond) any help would be appreciated!

We have the same problem with our pond, i was thinking of trying this too, just net the top of it, then they cannot dive/swoop into the water. we have both herins and kingfishers here, and they can take big goldfish too, we had four nicely sized fish (size of a block of butter+? (lol, only way i could think of sizing it)) and they took three of them, and we found one dying. now i think we are going to put all of our turtles in there, but its abit expensive to try without a net (incase they grab them too, or even the hawk's) but we'll see. getting the digger in again this week to landscape the pond/area a little more, and get some plants/rocks and such arround the pond. but the net would definatly (sp) ruin the whole niceness of it, but at the end of the day a pond full of plants/lillies just wouldnt look as good as if it had fish/turtles in it.

Ill work on this! if i get it started, i will more likely do it! (been meaning to throw up a topic on it for the past year.) heaps of pics from when we first got to our place to what it looks like at the moment. so for now this is abit boring.. and pointless. :bounce: i will get there. i think about things, and they usually get thought about, and not done. but i will do it.

30,000 is a wild guess, a bit of a leg-pull (if ya know what i mean :oops: ) we have a 1000 litre water tank, and i guessed it would take about 30 of those to roughly full it. last year my boss bought some new land, and it had this small pond in it, fed by a natural spring, so when we had the diggers in pulling the old orchard out we got the guy to make it abit bigger (just abit) anyway ts been a year now have a few plants planted and such. i think this had better go under another topic. so ill make one and put some photos up sometime. but its big! a good 1m/1.2m at the deepest part (middle of where we added) did have a 1.5m/1.8m (deep) part, it didnt look right so we fulled it in, took about 6 or 7 truck (hino tipper) loads (30cubic mitres of soil?) to full it in. (small tidal wave!) anyway the fish isnt going too well, and the others aint in there. i think 30+ years of no fish being in there, the birds (herrins/ kingfishers) didnt think to fly over to look for food, hence why they lasted a few months. but for them all to dissapear overnight (kinda, didnt see them for a couple days) and one left which looked beaten up, is kinda sad. someone mentioned eels? we are close to a stream (not quite a river, but there is whitebait there!) so that crossed my mind. we done a water analysis when we got the place, didnt show anything bad at the time. im hunting for a couple of test kits to check some other stuff im having a second thought about putting turtles in there now, with the birds and all. then again they're not as easy to spot being the fish were bright orange and all? id love to put my turtles in it, that is the plan anyway. have about 60/70 lillies in there (3 diff vars, not sure of colours yet they are just budbursting!), some starting to flower, a few water irises and another couple diff water plants. we are also going to fence arround it to keep the turtles in (having the wire netting 200mm into the ground) and put a couple of sand pits under the trees and such. anyway enough about that, already gone waaay offtopic. (im sorry :roll: )