500L Preformed Pond Successfully Buried, What Now?

Im just going to leave it for the first year to see if it stabilises by itself, the plants are alive so Im happy, it does feel like the algae levels are starting to reduce slightly.

I shined a torch in it after dark last night and the water beetle population or whatever they are seems to have doubled or trebled, would they be eating the algae do you think?

Also any clue what species those water beetles might be? About 5-10mm long darting around underwater, hard to get a pic…

1 year update!

9 lily pads now:

And they're getting big, you couldnt even see them in this wide angle shot earlier in the thread but now they're starting to dominate, the plant is only a year old and I didnt bother with an aquatic basket or marine compost, just tipped it out of the pot it came in and shoved it down into the gravel:

The ring of bare dirt around the outside of the pond was annoying me so grabbed a few packs of red and white clover seeds in Woodies and shook them around then sprinkled compost on top to hide them from the birds, a week of rain later, should be nice when it bushes up a bit:

2 weeks ago I added Veronica Beccabunga to the edge which is supposed to be good for soaking up excess nutrients and it spreads to hide the edges better and forms mats that pollinators like to use for basking and shelter. Also added Hippuris vulgaris underwater which will hopefully grow into tall spikes for dragonfly to perch on, that is shooting up towards the surface already, planted 3 spikes of it and now there are 6 gaining about half a cm a day.

I dropped another Nymphaea Alba lily over on the far left aswell as a lot of insects are using the pads to land on plus more coverage might keep the algae down, the algae levels have definitely dropped but the water is still pea soup, Id like to be able to see the bottom to see whats going on down there, lots of diving beetles shooting around so they must be hunting something.

Thats an interesting idea but Im terrified of duckweed getting in and most places around Limerick are infested. I do be up in the Burren hiking a lot so I suppose I could grab some there, might leave it for the rest of this year now and see what comes naturally before I give it a helping hand…

Sad what happened to Joel Ashton, it was his videos that kicked off this whole project for me:

The plants are flying it and the birds and pollinators look happy but the water is beyond murky and full of algae, I have a crazy powerful Alliexpress torch that I have to use on a tight beam at night just to see how the Hippuris vulgaris and others are doing below the surface, also the diving beetles seem to be the only aquatic life in there, should I just bite the bullet and get a bucket of muck and water from a healthy wetland and add it? Or give it another year and see if it improves? If the water was clear so you could look down and see what was happening it would be such an improvement.

11 pads on the lily now, no sign of the other one I put down but that happened last year aswell. The Hippuris vulgaris is absolutely flying it underwater, it came in a tiny pot with 3-4 little seedlings now theres a huge clump of them underwater about to break the surface, its grown about 50cm high in a month after planting on the bottom, too murky to get a pic yet.

Got this big stump and a few blocks of wood from the Uisce Eireann guys doing some works on the road. Im going to add piles of stones and rotting wood and a few ferns and other stuff around the area now to try and improve the habitat, the lawn has absolutely exploded with clover this year as per my other thread so the wildlife area project is coming along slowly but surely.

Any pics?

The new lily is putting out some monster size pads now, the biggest is 10cm across, I thought the Brooklime had died but I see 7 new shoots and one of them is flowering. Brooklime is supposed to be a great absorber of excess nutrients so hopefully with that and the Hornwort and a few others will start to see some algae reduction soon.

Still no sign of any frogs or dragonflies. The water is absolutely heaving with nymphs and larvae though so Im hoping for an increase in biodiversity soon especially something that might start eating the algae.

Theres no way that theres any nutrients getting in apart from the pollen and seeds and the odd leaf that I skim off the top with a net, the level of algae is fairly stable its just too high, coating every surface underwater and clinging to all the plants. Unless the birds are doing their business in the water too much, theres always a few splashing around on the edges.

Im hoping it will all die off this Winter and Ill remove all the dead vegetation then hopefully Ill have a proper ecosystem going next Spring, all the plants are in place now and algae levels are down 50% from this time last year when it was just a solid block of green.

If it starts to get swamped again next year Im going to try adding a bucket of mud and water from a nearby lake to see if that will kickstart things.