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Ponds & Aquatic Plants

Need to vent!

16 years ago

Spent the whole day working on my small waterfall where the stream empties into the pond. Bought a can of expanding foam and thought I had it fixed, but I apparently didn't get it in all the nooks and crannies, because the water has breached the foam on either side of my waterfall rock and is flowing under it instead of over it. Back to the drawing board. My fingers are black from the foam.

And even worse, as my sister and I were driving home from having dinner out, she looks over at the park a half block from my pond and says, "Oh look! A heron!"

Great. Just what I needed to hear. I turned around and went back to see for myself, and sure enough, a great blue heron standing just inside the park boundary, hardly more than a stone's throw from my back yard.

Needless to say, I went home and immediately netted my pond. Until now, I had used two strands of filament line and a scarecrow water sensor, but I haven't lost any fish yet, so I decided it was better to be safe than sorry.

That was probably the scoundrel that knocked over one of my ceramic cats that are sitting at the edge of the pond the other day. I figure it got blasted by the scarecrow and made a hasty exit, knocking over the cat.

Well, now he'll have to get past the scarecrow, the filament line AND the net!

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Comments (3)

sleeplessinftwayne
16 years ago
I am curious which foam you used for the repair. I have always used the Great Stuff and thought I had the correct one when I needed it. To my surprise, even though I had allowed the expansion to go on past need when I turned the pump back on the water started to drip and I could feel holes where the foam was being pushed away. I started over and the same thing happened. I checked the label and it is for gaps and cracks. I'm sure that was not the formulation I had previously. That must have been for big gaps or the one for windows and doors. Very annoying. Sandy
nkm56
Original Author
16 years ago
The label says "Handi Foam". I used that particular one because it's sold at the local ponding store, so I knew it was fish safe.
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nancyd
16 years ago
Can't comment on the foam since I've never needed to use it. But I will comment on the heron. Excellent idea to net the pond esp. now that you know you've got one. I've posted on this site before saying I had good results using 2 scarecrows. Well that was before he got immune to them. Then fish stared disappearing again. I'm now a firm believer that a net's the only thing that will work with some herons. We've only had our pond one year and we're learning there's a lot of myth and hype out there. Very few people have solid experience or advice they can offer to the backyard ponder. Most pond stores just want to push products at you that don't do anything and cost a lot of money. We're figuring it out as we go. Best of luck to you.

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