The colder weather arriving in Northern Virginia marks the ending of summer. With that also comes the time when we should start planning and preparing our outdoor tubs and patio ponds for the fall and winter. This is also a good time to reflect on how our tubs went. This is the second year I have done this so I am still learning. Below I will go over my tubs and how things went.
My tubs
This summer I had 3 tubs going.
First tub was one that I left outside from last year. A couple things actually survived the winter outside, the daphnia that I talked about in my Daphnia post and a water lily. For the summer, I added some plants, a Madagascar lace plant, Amazon Sword, and a couple of stem plants I found in a stream nearby. I found that this pond did quite well over the summer, especially during the early spring. As the peak heat came in, the daphnia didn't do as well, but the plants grew quite well and the water stayed crystal clear!
Second tub I put out did alright. It contained white cloud minnows, a few mystery snails, a fairly large anubias, some cryptocoryne, and Amazon frogbit. For the animals, unfortunatly the mystery snails crawled out. I think they came out during the heavy rains we had in the summer. The tub filled up and the snails were able to crawl out easily. As for the minnows, they seemed to do pretty well. I did see some babies during the summer, but I don't think any made it. As for the plants, the floating Amazon frogbit went a little out of control. They grew to huge sizes, roots going down to the bottom of the tub and took over the whole surface! This unfortunately I think had a negative impact on the underwater plants and chocked them out of sunlight and space.
My Third pond was similar and had a little worse result. The frogbit there chocked out all the plants and I think also made it hard for the fish I put in there to swim! Unfortunately I was only able to recover 1 fish from that tub.
Lessons Learned
Something I like to do at the end of the season is reflect on what did I learn which helps me plan for the next summer.
This summer I felt like I learned a few things that I will need to change next year
Control the floating plants
They may grow differently and much bigger outside and fish and plants underneath need space to move!
This may involve removing a bunch of floating plants and even trimming the roots
Keep water levels a bit lower if you have mystery snails
Not sure if I will try mystery snails next year, but if I do, I will need to make sure my tub doesn't get too full
Plans for the Winter
In the more immediate future the ponds need a little attention. I will be taking down the two tubs that have floating plants and moving the white clouds to an indoor tank for the winter. I may leave a couple of white clouds out to see if they survive the winter. The tub with the daphnia, I will be taking out the underwater plants, but leave the daphnia and water lily in as they should be able to survive the winter and come back next year.
How did your tubs and ponds do this year? What do you plan on doing next year?