Peggy........question about your pond

[CathyA]

Hi Peggy,
Someone on a pond forum I'm on has a 2 acre pond with fish. She planted about 6 water lilies and they did well at first, but now they're all gone. I don't know what to tell her, except its probably the fish eating them. Do you know how to protect water lilies from the fish eating them?

Or maybe you might know, Float On.
Thanks.

[peggy]

Hi Cathy. sorry I'm slow in responding. I don't check in here every day and I've been laid up with the flu...nasty stuff that!

It could be the fish. I'll bet she has either koi or grass carp to keep the pond weeds in check (I have both) Both are vegetarians and love water lilies. Or, if she doesn't have these fish, it could be the depth. Water lilies are pretty particular about the depth they are planted. Too deep and they won't thrive. This is my problem with my front fish pond. I'd love to have a few lilies there but it gets too deep too quick. I could only plant lilies about 3 or 4 feet out from the shore, then the depth drops drastically.

But yes, the fish are a problem. There are baskets out there to protect your plants, but I don't really like the looks of them. Plus there is the depth issue. I've been thinking there must be a way to 'float' the pots, as it were, at the right depth, protected by mesh that would allow the little fish to enter, but not the bigger ones, yet still be 'transparent' enough to not distract from the plants themselves. With a floating system, water levels wouldn't be an issue as the pots would always be at optimum levels in the water, no matter the seasonal rains (or lack of them, as in last year).
Oh well, I guess I need to sit down and design this system...unless some smart person here wanted to tackle this.;)

Of course, your friend needs to be sure the lilies she selected are right for her zone. Some can stay in the pond year round, and some need to be lifted for the winter.

On the other hand, my sister has a rather neat solution for the fish/lily conundrum. She has a small garden pond, and it has a sort of 'moat' designed in to it where the outer rim of the pond is a sort of trench around the pond. Imagine the pond where the edges come up, then go down and up again making a sort of trough maybe a foot wide. The barrier between the main pond and trough is just short of water level, where small fish can get into the trough but not anything larger than a few inches. This trough is where she plants her water plants. The leaves creep over into the main pond but the big fish can't get to the main body of the plants. A rather clever solution, but really only is helpful in a small pond. I suppose in a large pond you could cordon off a section with larger rocks and such to make a planting area. Could be really sweet actually, if you carried the plantings on to the shore.:)

I guess I'm not really helpful in this. Sorry. I guess this is a common problem everyone faces. You can have koi/grass carp or you can have plants, but it would seem you can't easily have both.

[CathyA]

Thanks Peggy!
I'll give her your suggestions. Do the fish eat the stems and blossoms, or do they mostly eat the tubers/roots? I'm thinking if you used a container and protected it with mesh, would the fish then constantly eat the stems and pads and blossoms? This is why I don't have any fish. haha

The depth is a good issue to mention to her, since she probably has her's too deep

Sorry you didn't get much rain this summer again. We didn't either. I hope the midwest doesn't become a desert!

Funny, but this year I have hundreds of tadpoles that survived in various stocktank ponds. Last year I started out with a bunch, then there wasn't a single one, when I emptied the tanks for the winter.
I try to save all of them when I drain the stocktanks, and put them in the inground ones.......but dang, there's going to be millions of them! I guess the snakes living in the ponds will take care of the overpopulation?!

I hope you're still enjoying your pond and all the various struggles for life going on in it!
Thanks again for your suggestions.

Oh........and get well soon!

[Float On]

That's the opposite problem I thought you were going to say she had. I though you'd say "and the water lilies have taken over and choked out everything else in the pond including the fish"....
I agree with Peggy that if she has carp, they may have eaten them. In a two acre size pond she'd really only need 2-4 carp. They can get really big.
Bluegill will eat holes in them.
They can also get a rot crown fungus similar to potato blight. Were they planted in baskets? Too small of a basket and the roots will stick out and be easy for fish or turtles to eat.
Does she have a lot of snails? They'll eat them, then fish or turtle will eat the snails damaging the lilies. You can hear a popping sound when fish 'suck' a snail off a lily pad.

I love that idea of a tiered moat you described Peggy.

[CathyA]

Thanks Float On!

The tiered moat does sound good........but I'm picturing raccoons having a field day with all those plants! People with much smaller ponds are advised to not have a shelf around the inside of the top part of the pond, because the coons can wreck it. They're advised to have a straight drop off, so the coons can't get into the pond as easily. I guess the bottom line is that animals/fish wreck just about anything. haha