u/BugPaths

I've been lurking this subreddit for some time. Hello! I'm a first time pond builder. I've built a small wildlife pond in my {city} garden for the birds and insects that live around my home. I started late (too late).. at the end of summer. Plan was easy.. dig a hole, get a liner, get some rocks, get a pump. But at this point things started to complicate..... bog filter, pond plants, let it run, deal with mosquitos.. ... nature has its own time...... so days passed and my little pond started to adapt. IT EVEN HAD BIOFILM OVER ALL THE POND ROCKS... but winter IS just around the corner, and I started wondering if my pond plants will survive (forget me not is just such a beautiful flower).

I asked here and apparently no... they won't.. so I started moving them deeper inside the pond, but when I looked at the deeper rocks... the biofilm was gone..

That's when I entered panic mode. If something ate the biofilm THAT FAST.. what will it do to the rest of my plants?

The answer probably lay in the pond itself. So I ventured on with my little endoscope camera..

I share this, maybe you'll find it entertaining, interesting or even funny.
A first time pond builder's experience semi documented.

But never did I think it would bewitch me to a point I would stop and stare for hours at it.

I've decided to build a small budget pond in my garden. This was one very hot summer, with almost no rain for 2 months. The lady of the house limited my budget to $100 so I had to make do with what I could. I used some leftover materials from around the house (some, I guess strong enough, mulching mesh instead of wool geotextile, rocks and pebbles), a donated old fountain pump from a friend (no label, no specifications.. no money) and a shovel.

So I've spent my money on 3 bags of pebbles, the PVC liner (EPDM was woohoo expensive and surprisingly PVC was good so far) and of course the pond plants (which to be honest I'm really scared they will not survive winter).

Work makes me go outside the city so I did trips around the countryside and whenever I saw a good enough boulder it went straight into my cars trunk. Biggest jackpot was when someone had the two giant willow tree trunks laying about in their garden and wanted to get rid of them. The sight of me carrying them in my small work car would be something...

Days passed and the pond started to take shape, but without any intention to care about my building speed.. nature was already using it. And that's when I realized.. .. I fell in love with it. Crows, pigeons, chiff-chaffs, titmouse even my birman cat seemed to do rounds at it. Insects like wasps (about 3 types so far), bees, dragonflies, butterflies and the never missing MOSQUITOS all converged at this small 2-3 square meters space because of what they've found..

I'm late. At least summer is gone and honestly I wish I would've finished faster. Feels like I've missed some of the action. I still have to cover the top of the bog filter and the yellow hose (leftover hose btw) so I still have some boulder hoarding to do. Need to prep it for winter, need to clean the leaves that fall into it, NEED TO KEEP THE KIDS OUT OF IT...

Sorry for the long story just felt like sharing.

She just visited my pond, up on the logs, perfectly camouflaged almost missed her...

I've been slowly building a small wildlife pond/creek mainly for the insects in my garden. No pond-building experience when I started and it took me some time to place my rocks "perfectly" haha (goes on to rearranging them the next day), but since autumn is here, I feel like winter will be over the corner and I'm getting a little worried about the plants going into winter.

Most of them are marginal pond plants in small pots, placed between the rocks with the soil permanently wet or partly sitting in shallow water. Some are right beside the flowing creek/cascade. In my area we get cold winters, but the cold winds are bad, so they can definitely see freezing temperatures and snow during winter.

Should these pots be okay where they are? Will the roots survive if the shallow water around them freezes, or should I move them deeper / bury the pots more / do something else before winter?

I'm also wondering what else a first-time pond owner should be thinking about before the first winter (I'll get a net for the leaves and get the pump into storage, but am I missing something?).

I've honestly been having a blast just watching the place change day by day. Biofilm is already covering the rocks, aquatic larvae have appeared, spiders have started hunting around the water. Did not get a toad yet (I know there are some near me) but yesterday a mantis apparently decided the pond was worth investigating 😯 ( https://youtube.com/shorts/d0xQIlf0Ylc?feature=share ).

I'm trying to interfere as little as possible and let it become its own little ecosystem, so any advice from people who have kept small wildlife ponds through winter would be hugely appreciated. Thanks and sorry for the long post.

I swear.. the acrobat ants in my garden only eat protein...

I've been documenting this Lasius illyricus trail in my garden for about a month.

The trail is roughly 30 meters long and remains heavily active day and night, even traveling through the darkest place of my garden beneath an old concrete platform full of centipedes and spiders.

I've followed both ends multiple times. One end seems to disappear beneath the concrete platform (wood, sand, dirt, concrete.. about 1 cubic meter of these), while the other leads to a food-rich area beneath several fruit trees, but I can't find them at the top of the soil. They literally vanish...

What puzzles me is the consistency. Even after disturbing parts of the route, the ants quickly restore it and continue using it. They don't deviate, it's just 1 end mystery disappearance and the other end probably same.

Apart from digging the dirt at the fruit tree end, I feel clueless... spend hours looking at that end of the highway only to observe crematogasters above them lol...

After documenting the colonies living inside this stump in my garden, I finally put the story together.

I've been documenting this massive 1m diameter stump for a few weeks now. First, I fell in love with the acrobat ants that were starting a new colony in it, then it was the Black Garden ants... but as I zoomed in closer, I realized there's a third colony a Tetramorium colony that lives beneath the stump... Never thought just one object in my garden can tell so many stories.

I've been documenting this massive 1m diameter stump for a few weeks now. First, I fell in love with the acrobat ants that were starting a new colony in it, then it was the Black Garden ants... but as I zoomed in closer, I realized there's a third colony a Tetramorium colony that lives beneath the stump... Never thought just one object in my garden can tell so many stories. Right now I'm on a mission exploring the inside of the stump with an endoscope camera....💥