Fishless pond, mosquitos and carnivourous nymphes etc

19 years ago

Ok the plant pond may or may not be fishless, I havent seen the trout fingerlings that I put in there in ages. If it is fishless I am wondering about leaving it fishless to allow invertebrates to thrive but I dont want it to become a mozzy factory. I am wondering if enough carnivourous insect life will build up to control mozzy larvae? I have just been wading through the azzola cover and there are surprising numbers of shrimps and water lice etc in there, I even saw a damselfly nymph. My thinking is that enough non-mozzy invertebrate life might over-winter to keep a good population of damselfly and dragonfly nymphes going.

Your thoughts, thanks.

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Comments (5)

chippewacat
19 years ago
Go for it---the amphibians will love it and won't have to compete with the fish. With any luck you will also get the bats swooping by for a meal. We have bats come over for a quick 5 minute meal at dusk during the summer. Its quite a sensation to be standing out there at that time.

I don't do any additional feeding (the only fish are the stickelbacks) and there seems to be plenty for nymphs.
AJC_1
19 years ago
Unfortunately the mozzys breed in such numbers the normal insect world wont dent thier population, fish do dent it if not totaly destroy it.
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chippewacat
19 years ago
Locality must have something to do with it as well. I have not noticed mosquitos being a problem in my Devonian pond, or indeed any other pond I have peered into locally. (I am very prone to being bitten as a general rule, so I would notice!) But the Fens is another issue and I imagine Northern Ireland is different again (and not nearly as vulnerable to mosquitos).

Stick a bird feeder or two near the pond, I'm sure the birds would appreciate of full smorgesbord of nuts and mozzies.
dampflippers
19 years ago
I think you'll get enough insects flying in and amphibians. This is what I'm tryong to do in my top pond. Last year before it was finished it was just a big daphnia factory, and I netted it to feed the sticklebacks in the bottom pond. I had lots of little black beetles and also some big (half or 3/4 inch ones) beetles.
It is now planted up, and in a warm spell in autumn a couple of frogs arrived, so I hope they will adopt this one to spawn in away from the stickleback. If not, I'll transfer some of the spawn.
The waterfall is finished, and when I finally get the pump in, I'll only run it intermittently with a pair of tights on after spawning to try to keep it fish free.
Good luck with yours....but I bet the trout turn up!!
Sean_McKinney
Original Author
19 years ago
I guess its worth a go, if I get a bloom I can always feed them to the other fishy ponds, they wont last in there.

Fishless pond, mosquitos and carnivourous nymphes etc

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chippewacat

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Fishless pond, mosquitos and carnivourous nymphes etc

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chippewacat

AJC_1

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