Raised Brick Pond – Ready for Winter

Yesterday, I spent a large part of the afternoon preparing my raised brick pond for winter. Below is a picture of what it looked like right before I began. To prepare the pond for winter, I sorted through all of the plants, composting the extras, and bringing a few inside to overwinter in an emersed setup. I also had to drain the water down to about 2 inches in order to fish out all of the zebra danios, which would definitely not survive the declining temperatures.

In the spring I added a dozen danios, and yesterday I pulled out about 4 dozen fish of all sizes from fry to adult. They’re going to overwinter in a terrarium setup inside, which they should love due to the waterfall current I have in there. Hopefully they won’t continue to breed in there because I really was only hoping to use them as mosquito control — not as a fish I really wanted to keep in large numbers.

Hyptis sp. Growing Emersed

One of the goals I had at the beginning of the summer was to flower as many plants as I could outside. In that respect, I had a number of successes including: Ludwigia repens x arcuata, Bacopa sp. ‘Araguaia’, Rotala sp. ‘Sunset’, Staurogyne sp. ‘Bihar’, Bacopa monnieri, Limnophila sp. ‘Wavy’, and a few others I’m sure I’m forgetting. There were a few that I wasn’t able to flower, but hopefully they’ll send up flowers in the emersed setup over the winter.

Limnophila sp. 'Wavy' Flower

Finally, I closed the season with four frogs making my pond their home. They weren’t happy about me draining the pond, but hopefully they still have a few weeks to go down the street to the runoff pond where they can overwinter in the mud. My pond is almost entirely above ground, so if they stayed in there, they would surely freeze solid, which wouldn’t be good. Next time I build a pond, I’ll definitely dig deep down to keep a refuge place for fish so that I can keep some natives out there year round.