Dr A

I don't agree with this, there is no air in wood. The stuff you see coming out of the wood is most likely water (under pressure).

When I set up my last tank you couldn't get any of the stuff (spider wood). Anyway I used the regular old wood they had (Mopane?). I boiled it for hours on end and apart from making a stink it didn't effect how waterlogged the wood was at all, which makes sense when you think about it (heat excites molecules, it's not going to A) soften or melt the wood or B) excite the water so much that it pushes it's way into the wood). FWIW my tank still leaches tannin's like crazy what seems like a year later. My suggestion would be to drill holes in the wood, working on the assumption that more surface area = faster water egress. That being said, if it's spindly little bits of wood it might be more trouble than it's worth.

The ducks/geese won't be doing much for the water clarity. Anyway plant the bejesus out of it. Sunlight on water directly = murky water. Something like Swamp Paperbark trees around the outside could be a go-er. Quite a few native swamp/marginal plants available on trademe, and I'm always a fan of the various North American pitcher plants (Sarracenia), which will do well in or around the edge of the pond. Perhaps with the solar pump as suggested, don't bother with the filtration, just use it as a water-mover.

Looks really good! Well done.

I'm really jealous. Soon as I buy a house I'm making me one of these.

I suppose you are inland a bit but what about using real salt water?

How much do they cost?

Yeah why bother with potting mix when they purpose make a aquatic mix.

You could put them on the island yeah, or just in the pond so long as the top of their container isn't covered by water. They're cheap, easy to grow and look rad. I have some growing in a peat moss bog (equal parts peat and perlite) and sphagnum and they don't do as well as the other ones I have growing in standing water. Venus Fly Traps and lots of other CP's will do well with that arrangement (or in your islands presumably), I wouldn't bother growing new world CP inside, lots of them need dormancy periods and/or insane amounts of light. About the only thing you can grow inside without an insane amount of light would be some of the native bladderworts and most sundews, and of course various neps. PS: Check out "The Savage Garden" by Peter D'Amato - it's considered the bible on growing CPs. Bonus content

Yeah mate, they can handle being frozen over, and love being grown in bogs/standing water.

Crying out of some sarracenias in there!

Crikey. You'd imagine it would be fairly well insulated? Underground, only 1 side glass...

How do you plan to mount the powerhead? It will ruin the clean lines - unless you modify the filter compartment (and not use a filter) or drill the back. Also re: the lighting, I think the ecoxoctic strips would be your best bet, you could mount them into the hood with a bit of cunning. I went pretty deep trying to figure out how to do this with one of these tanks (as I have exactly the same). FWIW They're called "superfish waves" overseas (EU/US?), so if you search for that on various nano-reef forums you get more hits of people using them. I'd be doing this too, but alas I don't know if I'll be living in NZ in the medium term (the Australian higher wage drum beats...)

Buy a diesel, convert it to run on fish and chip oil?

Crikey. On stock lighting? Have you wired them up?

Why would you want to? You'll never eliminate the worms, and they're probably better at finding food elsewhere than the loach.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I have a tank here that has zero fish in it, it's sat that way for ages (6 months +?) - there are still snails in there, despite no inputs beyond light and additional water for topups. The presence of lots of snails isn't necessarily indicative of over or understocking or over or underfeeding.

Curious to see how it goes, my experience with ponds outdoors with no filtration seems to be that they only look "good" with large amounts of vegetation.

How much can these guys be had for?

Not really, don't forget that LED lights are many times brighter (there's a technical term here... many times more luminous?) per watt than ye olde incandescent bulbs...

Nice.

I found my little pygmy cories to be hugely dependent on the tanks scape. Had a shuffle around a while ago and now I never see them (or my ottos)

Daltons Aquatic Mix - do a search on here. Seems to work pretty good...

I get the idea and think it's great - but it rankles me as you could surely grow something more useful in there at the same time...

I'm sure you can find lots of stuff on here about the different ways but if you updated your location someone near by may be able to seed your filter with some gunk. I think you're muddled up with cycling and the "Walstad" method ala enough plants to convert the fish waste into plant fertilizer.