When Galys/Alice came to live with us just over a couple of months or so she proved to be very inquisitive, getting up on her hind legs if necessary to search for anything interesting. As a result there were a few crashes in the night, especially in the kitchen.
There are 2 water bowls alongside their food bowls in the kitchen veranda but I wanted to exclude her from there for a while and closed the door betwen the living room, where they sleep, and the kitchen.
But I cannot deprive them of water, so I put a 3rd water bowl in the living room, and later a 4th outside on the front veranda to discourage her from trying to drink from the ponds, and falling in
All well and good but the downside of this is that I have got a bit lax about refilling each one each day, just glancing at the 2 veranda ones to make sure there was a good level in them. As it turned out they both took water from Alice’s bowl ignoring Jules’ one which is a little further away.
As I went there today I looked a little closer at this one, and saw to my horror half a dozen or so tiny wriggling wormlike creatures, less than a cm long. Of course I emptied it out immediately then scrubbed it clean before refilling it.
Anyone know what these are? I shall be inspecting their leavings in the garden more closely now in case there is any evidence there, but I am pretty sure that neither of them have drunk from that bowl recently.
I leave water bowls for the birds and a gravel/water one for insects…
I top 'em up as necessary, daily… but completely dry 'em out every 3-4 days to avoid infestations…
It takes a bit of juggling to ensure there’s always uncontaminated water available, but worth the effort…
Thanks @JaneJones, those are the little buggers. In a way a relief if so because I was worried they would be some kind of intestinal worms whereas, despite all my ponds, I am never bothered by mozzies here.
I think, along with changing the water in all the bowls daily, I will not merely top them up but give them a scrub at the same time. Never seen anything like it before.
Although there would be nothing I could do about it I will start taking samples from the ponds to see if I see them in there.
Any stagnant water will attract mossie larvae very, very quickly. Pond water is wonderfully rich in activity. And if your pond is healthy it will be buzzing with microorganisms!
The big one in the trees where I swim is very healthy, wildlife wise. The middle pond, also shaded by trees is different, unattended by me for a long time it is still full of water but mired with leaves and branches.
The one in the front garden, the lower one of the 3 which has always suffered from evaporation was almost completely dry till the heavy rainfall at the weekend. it is now more like a wet marsh than a pond. There used to be, some years ago now, a pump in that one which sent water through pipes up to the top pond which then overflowed down a channel and under a boarded terrace area, through the middle and down a waterfall to the bottom one. As you can imagine it got quite expensive so I gave it up and concentrated on the top and bottom ones. The latter also takes the water from a water butt which is fed by 3 of our 4 rooves.
Just seen your chart. I don’t recognise any of those, are they visible to the naked eye? And are any harmfull?
None are harmful in normal quantities, and protect your pond against build up of bad algae. Most are tiny, less than 1mm, but if you put water in a glass and hold it up to the light you shoukd be able to see some of the larger ones bopping about.
What’s bad algae as opposed to the opposite? My swimming pond has sides lined with green stuff but my eyes, nose and mouth are firmly shut against ingress of water.
Depends what you mean by dipping. I never swam in the local ponds but did fish for pet sticklebacks, which incidentally lived for a very long time as my engineer Dad built a triangular aquarium to fit on the corner shelf in the living room.
If you have algae you can pick up and having hanging strands, or handfuls of slime, or or can see tiny, tiny leaves it’s fine. The nasty stuff is the blue green algae which spreads across the surface with little substance to it.
I’ll look at the link later, off to the vet for vacc annuels shortly, but there is no algae on the surface of the swimming pond, I expect me ploughing up and down several times a day keeps that at bay.
Edit: seen it now, very interesting, although there is not much water in the bottom pond at the moment I think I will start to take more interest in at after watching that.
