Cannas on the step. It took approximately 6 weeks for the chlorine to be completely gone from the pool. During this time we ran our pool pump most of the time to keep the algae down. Still our water changed to a dark shade of green with visibility near zero.
We decided to add some plants first so we purchased several cannas from Lowe's to try out and a large, hardy water lily from Creative Water Gardens in Garland, near our home. We also purchased 10 mosquito fish there to help keep the mosquitoes in check. I really wanted to buy more because our "pond" is huge, but they convinced me not to waste my money. Apparently mosquito fish are the bunny rabbits of the fishie kingdom.
They were right, by the way! We've had tiny fry every single day since we brought the first 10 home! Not long after that we purchased 50 feeder Comet Goldfish from Petsmart at $.22 cents each. 2 didn't survive the trip home and over the next several days we lost about a dozen - some from the bottom drain suction, which we fixed by adding large rocks over top to keep them away, and some for no reason we could discover. After 3 weeks of no more deaths, we decided to add 40 more. We have had NO fishie funerals since!
We decided to add some plants first so we purchased several cannas from Lowe's to try out and a large, hardy water lily from Creative Water Gardens in Garland, near our home. We also purchased 10 mosquito fish there to help keep the mosquitoes in check. I really wanted to buy more because our "pond" is huge, but they convinced me not to waste my money. Apparently mosquito fish are the bunny rabbits of the fishie kingdom.
They were right, by the way! We've had tiny fry every single day since we brought the first 10 home! Not long after that we purchased 50 feeder Comet Goldfish from Petsmart at $.22 cents each. 2 didn't survive the trip home and over the next several days we lost about a dozen - some from the bottom drain suction, which we fixed by adding large rocks over top to keep them away, and some for no reason we could discover. After 3 weeks of no more deaths, we decided to add 40 more. We have had NO fishie funerals since!
Mosquito Fish fry.
Our son Colin getting his sand on! This is approximately at the halfway point of filling sand bags. We decided that adding a plant shelf in both the shallow and the deep end would be a good idea. After propping the water lily on rocks and crates, we knew we'd need a better solution if we wanted to add more plants. From what we read, most potted water plants don't go much deeper than 2-3 feet.
Also, every bit of the interior of our pool is sloped, making it difficult for our make-shift pedestals to be sturdy. Remember, we wanted a SWIMMING pond and it's not a good idea to let people swim around rickety structures! So we chose to use sandbags to build our shelf. The idea was that they could be stacked and molded to fit the slope of our pool.
Also, every bit of the interior of our pool is sloped, making it difficult for our make-shift pedestals to be sturdy. Remember, we wanted a SWIMMING pond and it's not a good idea to let people swim around rickety structures! So we chose to use sandbags to build our shelf. The idea was that they could be stacked and molded to fit the slope of our pool.
This is our first batch of 100-50lb sand bags. We filled them with clean cushion sand that we had delivered, which cost a little over $100. The sand bags came from Amazon at $30 for 50 bags. Jim started in our shallow end and it was no easy task due to the slope! We wound up with Mt Fuji - wide base at the bottom for an itty bitty level ledge at the top! 100 bags wasn't nearly enough for the shallow end, and we still had more than half of the 9 cubic yards of sand left! So we ordered another 100 bags, filled them and added them to the ledge. After 200 sand bags in our shallow end, it was apparent, to me at least, that sand bags would not be the greatest option to make a ledge in the deep end! We will figure something else there.
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