Designing for Outdoor Water Feature

[meepokman]

Added this to the water today. Seems like a popular plant in LFS. What's the name?

[Urban Aquaria]

Where can we find cheap foam/resin rock/wood panel?

You could get those plastic/resin rock or root design backgrounds from LFS... places like Seaview, East Ocean, Green Chapter etc.

Another alternative could be those wooden half-cylinder block fencing sold at garden supply shops/nurseries, even Daiso also sells them too (at their gardening section). Just cut or saw them into size and attach to the filter box, can make it look like a mini log cabin.

I went online to search and confirm what I have is tubifex. However, now I'm hesitant to add fish in as I'm trying to make it very low maintenance.

If its tubifex then the fishes will love to snack on them. I guess you'd need to at least put one or two small fishes in the water container to prevent mosquito breeding anyways.

Added this to the water today. Seems like a popular plant in LFS. What's the name?

Thats Cyperus Haspens, its a marginal/pond plant. The crown you see currently attached to the driftwood is actually the emersed part... thats one of the ways to propagate it. The plant will grow long stems straight up and above the water surface, then it will sprout more emersed crowns. It can create a nice riparium effect in planted tanks.

[meepokman]

Oh dear. I totally submersed it. Would it be OK?

[Urban Aquaria]

Oh dear. I totally submersed it. Would it be OK?

Its fine, its supposed to be submersed... thats how its propagated. Just that the majority of the plant growth is above water, the bottom will develop roots to anchor itself to hardscape or substrate.

Eventually, it should look something like this:



Photo from Google Images.

[meepokman]

Ok. Then it seems like it's not appropriate for my shallow tank w/ plastic mesh.

I guess I will have to transfer it to my water lilies pot after it grows taller.

Thanks UA

[Ingen]

Nice DIY. That's an interesting plant. Where did you get it from?

[meepokman]

Nice DIY. That's an interesting plant. Where did you get it from?

I got it from Seaview.

[meepokman]

Ran into a serious problem with the setup over the CNY.

The water level seems to drop crazily in the afternoon. So much so that the water pumps fail to work. We are talking about 0.5cm of water left in the feature.

The family + maid has to top up the water every afternoon.

Family though it could be due to a leak. I think otherwise as it only happens in the afternoon. If there is a leak, the water level will also drop overnight. However, that doesn't happen.

My hypothesis is that the very hot weather (over the past few days) has actually increased evaporation rate tremendously. Especially since there is quite a bit of exposed "water flow".


Anyone has experience with such phenomenon or has an alternative hypothesis I can test for?

[mUAr_cHEe]

Maybe set up a camera for the afternoon and check if any stray cats decided to make your water feature as their afternoon water break station just as the Wang Jiao near my office is a regular 3pm watering hole for alot of office workers here.

But I highly suspect it might be water evaporation too. You could set up an auto water top station as well to combat this problem long term.

[meepokman]

Maybe set up a camera for the afternoon and check if any stray cats decided to make your water feature as their afternoon water break station just as the Wang Jiao near my office is a regular 3pm watering hole for alot of office workers here.

But I highly suspect it might be water evaporation too. You could set up an auto water top station as well to combat this problem long term.

Wang Jiao? haha.

Any recommendations for DIY auto water top up system? I did a search previously and they seem pretty complicated. Might end up bigger than my water feature.

[fireblade]

on top of evaporation, it might be splashes from your filter cause some water loss too. Maybe you can connect a hose or pipe from your filter to the water to minimise water splashes. not forgetting water flow from top of your big vase to the water... think that will increase evaporation as well... maybe can think of changing to a deeper base?

[mUAr_cHEe]

If my memory does not fail me, for a simple electric-driven system, all you need is 2 float switches, a small pump, a water container and a hose for your basic unit. People also add in an air stone and pump for circulating the water in the auto top up container.

It will not be bigger than your water feature. I can imagine you doing a similar-sized-auto-water-top-up-system-in-a-container and stack it on top or under your DIY filter.


There are also gravity-driven auto water top up systems, which you can google. There are plans for you to make it online.

Perhaps you can also check out what commercially-available solutions are there, I remember some of the better-established and bigger LFS do sell but I also seem to remember they are rather expensive thats why I did not get one.

[mUAr_cHEe]

OK. I might have missed this one.

http://deaquatic.com/product/bmwaterleveltopup/

[Ingen]

Or use a timer and powerhead to pump water at interval from a water container?

[Urban Aquaria]

Yeah, thats the thing with shallow container ponds with larger surface areas, the evaporation rate can be very high in hot weather, with a pump or filter circulating the water, the evaporation gets even higher.

For my previous outdoor balcony water garden, with its 90cm x 60cm surface area, along with solar fountain pump activated during the day, the water level drops around 2-3+ cm daily... thats almost 10-15+ liters of water evaporated (more than 10% of the total volume lost every day). So i had to top it up with a large 25 liter bucket of water every 2 days. The good thing with high evaporation is the water is kept much cooler than ambient temperature (ambient can be 31-32°C but the water stays at 27-28°C).

An auto water top-up system installed on your container pond would help, but you still need to regularly top up the water storage tank (unless its those large barrels which can store a weeks worth of the water top-ups).

During the rainy season it'll be easier though, can get constant auto water top-up from the rain (just have to drill a drain hole 2cm from the top of the container to prevent overfilling).

[meepokman]

Thanks for the suggestion.

To satisfy the curiosity of the family. I'm in the midst of emptying all flora and fauna from the feature. Bring out the container to check for leaks.

Another question.

My friend gave me a bunch of plants (right) and told me it's frogbits.
But I had the impression that the plant (on the left) is frogbit.

Which is which?

[fireblade]

no picture attached...

[meepokman]

no picture attached...

Is it not turning up? I see it though.

[mUAr_cHEe]

Meepokman, there is something wrong with your dropbox link.

Alternatively, you can host your image on some photo-sharing site or you can use the forum function here.

[meepokman]

Is this turning up?