Wheel's Patio Pond Project

More progress to report.

I have built up the main parts of the bog filer. Got my bulkheads in the bottom, got my Uniseal in the top rim, and I even attached some off-cut neoprene sheet to the bottom (to keep it from sliding around on top of the steel planter stand). The 1" Uniseal takes a 1.75" hole saw to cut the port for it.


I also finished stitching up the plastic canvas screen to go around the internal canister to keep the rocks away from it. Even did a quick eyeball check with a spare flower pot for potential planting purposes.


I also cut and dry-fit the planter/divider frame. It was frustrating to try and get things juuuuuust right, but I got all the lengths dialed in and everything fits together great. The 24" window planter box has a removable tray for retaining water in its normal use case. I took that off and there's a molded set of vents and drains in the bottom that give it a smaller footprint with the tray removed. This means it fits securely into the top rack and rises 1/4" above the surface, even when the water in the tank is all the way up to the drainage holes. Tested it by sinking it down with some rocks in lieu of the substrate (and the plants I haven't ordered yet).
In all the joints, I drilled some holes for air and drainage to help it fill with water and sink. Now I have to black them out with Krylon Fusion and put it all together permanently. I thought about skipping the cement, but the pipes come apart much more easily when the whole thing is wet so I'll at least glue some strategic joints.


Need to do today: buy another clear acrylic panel, cut it to size, and drill it out so I can attach it to the divider with zip-ties. Might as well get the cheap pot scrubbies while I'm out since there's a Dollar Tree right next to the hardware store.


In the process of this I have also assembled quite the kit for plumbing work. Pipe wrench, three different kinds of cutters, two different reamers, large size hole saws, etc. etc. It's bumping up the price pretty significantly. This was supposed to be a "budget" build but scope creep and my design decisions have stretched it past the original marker. I'm not really saving any money versus digging and lining a traditional pond. But mine will have a window, at least!

Ugh. See that ball valve, and the threaded adapter? I very lightly cemented them to an off-cut from my frame cutting adventure to make a flush-out valve for the bog filter. (No, I didn't prime: I've seen evidence that priming actually weakens the joints, despite the fact that code requires it for residential plumbing. I'm not plumbing residentials anyway!)





I had to visit four hardware stores over two hours just to get those yesterday. Incredibly frustrating, especially when I checked ahead and first went to a store that had them "in stock." The plumbing fitting section in every chain store I've been to is uniformly disorganized. I guess because people need to bring in a sample of what they're working with to "make sure it fits" instead of focusing on things like ID and Schedule. And since these fittings tend to be small, complete or partial theft (taking components out of a bagged set) seems to be rampant.

Anyway, today I'm priming the PVC pipes for painting. I'm just giving them a quick rub of acetone to open up the outer surface a bit, and letting them dry in the open air for a while. The paint is Krylon Fusion, which is one of the trusted paints for fishkeepers (even though it isn't officially "aquarium safe") and one of the only paints that sticks to plastics well. Even so, PVC really benefits from being solvent-primed first.


This is how I'm letting them dry and hanging them for painting: lodging a 1/2" dowel rod into the legs of a sawhorse and slipping the pipes over those so I can hang multiple lengths at once. Once they're primped I'll tape off most of their end sections (very slight overlap because I don't want paint gaps) and will be hitting them with a few light coats of Krylon. Painting won't be a "today" thing, though. And instead of the front porch, I've cleared out an area of the garage and laid down tarp and cloth to catch stray paint.

Testing my luck with the spray foam encasement for the waterfall basins.

My first test was just to take one of the molded basins, turn it upside-down, and cover it with spray foam. Then losely drape a plastic drop cloth over it to kind of contain it, and put a board over that to make a flat bottom.



That didn't work quite as well as I'd like. The bottom wasn't very flat, and the foam did stick to the basin in a lot of places.

So this time I'm covering the basin with more plastic drop cloth, and stapling some more drop cloth in a double layer around the top board. This time I'll spray the foam around the wrapped form, with a gap at the "bottom" (top, in this case) virtually free of foam. Still going to sandwich the whole thing down with that plastic-encased board.





We'll see how it turns out. I might start the next one with a ring of foam around the perimeter at the bottom to form a barrier around the basin's lip and then work up the walls.

So attempt 2 didn't turn out so great after all. Too much of a gap around the rim where the foam didn't expand downward. The foam pulled away from the LDPE drop cloth easily, but it stuck tenaciously to the exterior-rated plastic tape I used to hold that around the basin. The weight of the board on top may have distorted the basin as the foam was curing. And after I left the basin and the foam overmold separated for about a day, the foam shrank and distorted further so it won't fit around the basin.




Attempt 3 is being made. First step was to cut down the size of the board on top to prevent it from spreading the basin while the foam is setting up.
Second step was to lay down a thick layer of foam around the perimeter and a little way up the basin walls. I used 3" gap filler formula for this. After letting that start to harden, I went back and added a layer of 1" gap filler foam to reach the bottom of the inverted basin and apply the top board to level things off/keep the foam from expanding upwards.


It turned out pretty well so far. The layer of foam is much thicker and it seems to have mostly not shrunk so much. I saw that one side was a little low, so I'm leaving the basin right-side up but filling that spot out a little with more foam and with the board sitting on it to keep it level.


It should be ready by about 5pm today. I may leave it overnight to see if that keeps the foam from distorting itself post-cure.

But if it also shrinks or pulls itself out of shape, I'll probably have to come up with some other way to gussy-up these waterfall basins. I've thought about using scrap cloth dipped in cement and draped over the basin forms to make a rough shell. It'd probably prove easier in the long run. I'd prefer something like spackle/patching compound that I could sculpt like clay over these basins, but it'll have to be waterproof and relatively affordable. The 3M stuff I bought to go over these foam surfaces is pretty pricy.

Well so far, this one hasn't significantly shrunk. So I'm carving it up a bit to whittle down the excess foamage, going for a rough-hewn kind of contour.

A few voids and mis-placed cuts left gaps in the foam. Fortunately, Gorilla Glue is polyurethane-based just like Great Stuff, so I'm using that to fill in with off-cut scraps. I can also go back later and build up a bit more if I need to.



After letting the glue set up, it'll be ready for a filler to go over it and cover those foam cells. I've got some color-changing spackle that's waterproof, and I also have some older 2-part epoxy-based wood filler (left over from a window repair last year) I can try. I know the epoxy has a consistently somewhere between marshmallow fluff and JIF, so it might be easier to apply than the spackle.

Seriously rethinking my approach to the foam shells. I was able to fill in about half of the voids in that first one with an 8 oz. tub of spackle, but it's not great.

So I'm gonna try something else and hope it turns out better.

I want to take one pre-formed basin, turn it upside down, line the outside with my drop cloth, and stick a bunch of ~1 inch standoffs to it with magnets from inside the shell. Then I want to encase that with foam, lay another sheet of drop cloth over the goop, and put ANOTHER basin over it as an outer mold, held in place with more magnets and a nice chunk of MDF on top for weight.

So it'll be like this:


Then let it cure. I may need to remove the outer magnets, the outer basin, and the outer layer of plastic drop cloth to get the inside shell fully cured.

Hopefully that will give me a nice foam shell with a uniform thickness and mostly clean, smooth surface, leaving minimal trimming and filling around the perimeter before painting.

I'm gonna need more spray foam, though. The cans are only good for about two applications, or a little less than one shell apiece.

(Oh by the way, all those little standoffs are just uniformly sized chunks of mild steel I found in the road by a house one day, after some sort of work truck was parked there the day before. I don't know what they're for, but now they're acting as standoffs between the shells.)


Once the weather is less humid, I REALLY need to start spray paining the PVC frame for the plant stand as well. I had a couple of days this last week before the rain started but the free spot in the garage was occupied by curing foam. Fortunately, polyurethane foam cures more quickly in high humidity even if paint doesn't.

First shell de-molded, but the foam is so thick and the plastic sheets so enveloping that it isn't fully cured even after 18 hours. Parts were still tacky the to the touch this morning when I peeled the plastic back, so I spritzed it with some water and left it to cure more fully out in the open. Still a couple of pockets that feel too soft right now.

As to the finish, it's a much better starting place. Some trimming will have to be done around the rim and some big voids need to be filled, but nothing like resurfacing the whole thing like the shells I had to carve down into shape. I think this will be the way to go, so I'm going to go ahead an make a couple more while this one cures.

edit Removing the standoffs from the shell required cutting out some sections (and locating some of the sunken standoffs with a magnet). Pulling those out revealed more pockets that hadn't fully cured. I wetted all those spots down with more water and will let the shell stand outside for a while.

Quick update. Still struggling with these foam shells. Even though they've been cured for weeks, and I've trimmed and spackled them, they still expand and shrink substantially and are putting cracks in the "heavy duty" lightweight, "flexible" spackle compound. Also, the weather is moving into full Summer mode so heat and humidity in the garage will not be conducive to painting for the foreseeable future.

So today I took what I've got and moved it into a disused bedroom upstairs, with drop cloth laid out for a couple of meters in all directions. Progress should be quicker, but I'm still having issues with the shells not being strictly stable in their final forms. I've got one that's primed with a few coats of black Krylon Fusion All-in-One and I bought some granite textured Rustoleum to give the finished products a stony appearance. Hopefully it works out.

I thought about switching to Plasti-Dip as a primer since it's flexible enough to keep up with the shells' expansion and contractions, but that wouldn't do much for the final paint application.

I really wanted to have this entire thing done by June and it looks like I'll have to get a move on to have it done by July.

Long delays, mostly weather related. It's been too hot and boggy to get much spray painting and clear coating done, I've had to scrounge up time to set up a room for it indoors and just get a couple coats in when I can.

1) I have the foam basin shells finished-ish. Just a few places where the foam and spackle split apart that I'd like to touch up with some dabs of paint, but other than that it's good to go.

A couple of pics with the painting setup. Just sawhorses, MDF tabletop, lots of drop cloth, and things to paint. I'm using Krylon Fusion for both the PVC pipe and as a base coat for the foam shells. For the fake stone texture effect, I picked up some Rustoleum stuff to go over that. Fusion clear coat went over the shells when that was sufficiently stony-looking. The spray foam and the lightweight spackle I filled it with are still splitting and cracking in places, though.


2) This means I was able to get some cinderblock and pavers and mock up the variable heights for the cascading filter/waterfalls feature, so I have something to show for this at long last!

This is purely to get everything roughly in place for a sense of the final placement and plumbing plans. Everything is finally working out! Pics within.


Also, plant update. Those wild arrowheads that were not doing so great? Well, I repotted them with some fertilized soil and separated tiny plantlets from the runners to give me about four or five healthy individuals. Even a vicious, plant-eating deer attack couldn't keep them down for long. And what looks like a lone, surprise soft rush volunteer is also flourishing. My spike rush (not pictured) is drooping a lot, probably root bound, but still hanging in there. I added some ferts and the color perked up for many of the stalks.



Tape measure is stretched to a meter/39".

So this project is still alive, despite the heat!

Got some video of a quick wet-test.





Gonna need to add some "lips" to the outflow of each basin to avoid water sticking to the foam shells and running down onto the ground instead of flowing smoothly off and into the lower basins. I can cut some from the excess neoprene sheet that I made the window gasket from, so that shouldn't be a big deal.
Also, with a couple of gallons of water in each basin, the shells experienced more deformation and hence more cracking. Glad I didn't touch them up yet!
Again, if I had to do them over I'd try to make the shells out of real cement (or hypertufa or something).

But the general concept looks sound.

Quickie on paint progress for the PVC plant holder.

Already did the pipes weeks ago before the weather turned hostile, but I left the joints until last. Got 'em taken care of, now. All PVC parts were "primed" by wiping them down with acetone and letting them dry prior to painting.

I drove a bunch of deck screws partway into an off-cut piece of wood and used it as a rack to hold the parts upright for painting.

Then, for each opening in the joints I used a tiny piece of scrap PVC pipe off-cut, and a piece of paper towel bunched into a plug, so I could paint all over and get every part of the exterior surface coated.



After that it was just spray 'n pray. A couple of very light coats on the first day, let those cure two days, then went back with heavier subsequent coats. Turned the pieces this way and that, and only allowed about 20 minutes to an hour between coats so they were just dry to the touch before the next one went on.

At the end of it all, the majority turned out pretty well. A couple needed some spot shots and that went on too thick, but it's going into a pond so I'm not too broken up about it.



The short PVC rings and paper plugs did a decent job of keeping paint from getting to the inner surfaces but not stopping it from coating the rims.




Hopefully that means there won't be any fouling up the cement I use to permanently glue them all together. I'm going to just use a teensy amount, and apply it deep in the joint instead of slathering it all over. This is purely structural and it won't bear tremendous loads, so I just want to keep it from falling apart when I take it out for maintenance.

After gluing them, I plan to give them a couple of passes with clear coat just to keep the UV from messing with them. But they'll be underwater and in a single orientation virtually all of their life, so I'm not going to be a stickler for coverage. Mostly just going for the upper surfaces, and on the parts that are closer to the surface.

Before I call it quits on the paint jobs, though, I should tackle the outflow for the bog filter (what I jammed the garden hose into for the flow test videos). Going to do a base coat of black and then switch to "Oil-Rubbed Bronze" so it looks metallic from a distance. I've actually already used that Krylon color on something else, some solar LED post caps that live outside the porch.



I think the color will look good with the faux-wood resin planter and such.

It's winter and I'm still held up by these dang foam shells for the waterfall basins. The paint I used to get a nice, granitic texture? Doesn't hold up. Temperature swings cause the foam to expand and contract, splitting the paint (and the foam).

I'm trying to rescue them in a last-ditch effort by coating them in a thick, rubbery skin using several liquid rubber products: liquid Plasti-Dip (PD), and rattle cans of spray-on PD and Flex-Seal (FS).
So here's a picture of the foam shells with a "primer" of white FS sprayed on, showing some of the need to fill in gaps and cracks:



And a close-up of some gaps and cracks to be filled with liquid PD



Here are some filled gaps, and a wide shot of the primed and filled shells ready for the next step. The results look a little bit like haunted house props because of the white FS and red PD I had handy, so I hope this doesn't trigger anyone's gore-phobia.


Here are the shells after applying a heavy first coat of black FS spray that will form the base of the color coats:



And a close-up of some touch-up work I had to do. Spray FS goes on thick, but spray PD goes on thin (and in a nice, tight vertical line), so there were some gaps left by the FS that I went back and painted over with a rattle can of black PD. I was able to hit it from multiple angles to get more coverage in the rough textures.
Before:



After:



Both of these coatings really stink, and part of the slow-down has been finding days where I can let these cure without having too many people around to be offended by the volatiles off-gassing. But filling in all the gaps with liquid PD also took multiple days as I let applications cure and then built up over them.
After I'm satisfied with the base color layer's coverage, I'll go back and start messing with combinations of black/white/gray spray and spatter to try for a granitic look, then seal it with UV protectant.

Again, if I could go back in time and re-do this part of the project I would have stuck with my original idea of cement or hypertufa for the basin shells, instead of this foam. Way cheaper, and would have been faster even allowing for hypertufa to fully set.

It seemed like a good idea at the time?

Gotta get this project moving. I'd like to have some time in the cool weather before spring really starts going to get this pond and its bog filter established. We've had a mild winter (even by our standards) and some of the wildflower seeds I sowed this fall are starting to sprout already.

Drizzt321 said:

Hm. Is there a reason why you're doing foam vs forms and plaster/QuickCrete or the like? Seems like it was a quicker/simpler method, but starting to seem less and less like that now.

Click to expand...

Plaster is out because of the water these will be around, and the humid weather. I wanted the material to be waterproof throughout. Also, there's already some weight concerns with the planter stands I've been able to find to make this arrangement work. Foam is light-weight, and insulating to boot.
Cement I was nervous about using because I've never tried it before, and was worried it would soak up too much heat in the summer sun that it might cook my future fish friends.
Spray foam I knew something about from previous experience, just not for THIS kind of application. I thought it would be cheaper and faster because the foam cures in 24 hours, but there were problems I didn't foresee.

Defenestrar said:

Do you have a feel for when to pull the trigger and start building with hypertufa? Or at least doing it in parallel so it's got time to start curing while you keep trying to salvage the foam parts?

Click to expand...

Honestly I'm thinking of waiting until these are known to work/fail first. We still have some cold weather on the horizon but our days are already almost in the 70s F / low 20s C right now, so it if I can get these out the door they should give me a good idea of their weather resistance. (Like I said, mild winter even by our standards.)

Rubberized coatings aren't strictly waterproof with prolonged contact or humid conditions.
I did consider remaking these in the gray flexible spray foam for weather seals, but this was already getting expensive enough.
Where I'm situating the pond there will be no digging. That's part of the reason it's above-ground in the first place.

The basins have molded plastic liners, pre-formed ones used in landscape water features. I actually used two of them to mold each shell. So cement leaching into the water supply won't be a problem.

I'll keep it in mind.
Right now the combo of Flex Seal and Plasti-Dip seems to be working. Just did some final base black touch-ups on two of 3 foam shells today. FOr all intents and purposes they're all sealed up with pretty good coverage.

I'm gonna try spraying some gray/white/black on them next for the stony look.

Finally got the base black layer where I wanted it.
Last night I covered that with a layer of grey Plasti-Dip spray. It turned out very dull, dark, and leaden, which was disappointing.

This morning I worked them over with a very light spritz of white PD spray, and that instantly improved the look of the grey. So I also did a little bit of striping for the kind of banded granite/gneiss look of the stone we quarry around here. The PS spray comes out in a very thin, vertical bar instead of a spot spray so control is a bit of an issue. But I'm confident with a few alternating B/G/W color layers and some spatters, it'll turn out looking much better.

The kind of look I'm going for, a couple of representative chunks of our indigenous quarried stone:



Pics of the grey-colored shells with white striping, first pass:

No pics yet, but I am making rapid progress on these stupid shells at long last. Layer and spritzing alternating colors is doing a whole lot to make them look more naturalistic, and I even cheated and used some of my remaining granite textured Rustoleum spray paint (sparingly).
Gonna have to put some UV-resistant clear coat on these, maybe do a little trimming of the plastic basin forms, shore up the pour spouts with some neoprene lips to make sure it all flows where it's supposed to, and I can probably start setting up the pond properly for a test run after that.


Edit: You may be wondering about the pond plants, especially those I dug up to use last year. Turns out at least a few of my arrowheads have survived the winter in tuber form, and are just now putting up some sprouts to test the air. My big clump of grassy soft rush (Juncus effusus) has stayed humongous and green all through the year, and is in danger of completely overrunning the big planter it's in. I can probably split it up into 3 or 4 separate plantings. Some common jewelweed seeds I plucked this November started sprouting a week ago and I just transferred a few seedlings to their own pots, now that we're not slated for any overnight frosts for a while. \
I still need to beg, borrow, steel, or even purchase more types of plants (looking at common horsetail, golden club, and lemon bacopa at least).

Drizzt321 said:

I suppose cattails grow a bit too big for your relatively tiny pond?

Click to expand...

Yep. S'why I'm looking at horsetails, especially the dwarf varieties. They also give off a nice "bamboo" vibe.

Defenestrar said:

You could throw some mica dust on between layers of clear coat to help get the natural sparkle of the local rock.

Click to expand...

Not necessary.

I'm pretty much done with the color and texture work. I did a little quick test run with the shells and basins in place, and I have to make some adjustments to fix a drainage issue with one of them. A little cut neoprene rubber lip should take care of that. Meanwhile I'm applying the clear coat.

The basins are finished, modifications made, and as I speak they're running water through with flying colors. I have a bucket set up to catch water from the basins, pump it back up to my empty bog filter, which then cascades it back down through the basins. Gonna try running it overnight.




I did have to attach some rubber lips to the molded plastic basins for two reasons: to extent their reach slightly and to optimize water flow without any dripping down into the foam shells. It's working great on both counts.
Surprisingly, plain old contact cement turned out to hold the neoprene to the HDPE basins very well! Just did the usual treatment: scuffed up the hard surface a little, applied cement to both surfaces, let them cure for about 15 minutes, then carefully pressed them together all the way around.
To protect the neoprene from the sun, I sprayed it with a coat or two of black Plasti-Dip and then a coat or two of Plasti-Dip UV protectant. Because all three parts were black already, it barely shows up.



The bog filter gets water through an inlet with a check-valve (to prevent siphoning water away in case of a catastrophic failure). From there it flows through a home-made mechanical filter (coffee canister filled with scrubby pads) and then into a mock-barrel tub. In the finished setup, this will be filled with mesh laundry bags of lava rock to act as surface area for biological filtration. There's a plastic canvas separator to keep them away from the mechanical filter so it can be removed separately for cleaning.



Also got a test of the flush mechanism, a quarter-turn ball valve on a short stretch of pipe screwed into one of the bulkheads at the bottom of the bog filter. Works great, no leaks.



Tested with some terra cotta plant pots in the various basins and the bog filter. I plan to line them with geotextile fabric, fill them with sand, and plant some nice emergent plants in them to help soak up nitrogenous wastes which they'll use to make more plant tissue.



This has been an important test run, now that the basins and shells are in their final state. I can tell I'm going to have to play with their spacing a little bit, their bulk is tricky to work around in a few spots.
But now there are no major show-stoppers. I'll be a matter of getting everything ready and putting it all together!

Yep.

Still haven't settled on the plants selection yet. I might go with some intentional algae seeding. At some point I might want to stock it with a few central stonerollers and they're algae-eaters. I can get filamentous algae from any given ditch around here in certain months of the year.

I took the test system apart and the check valve wasn't doing enough checking. Found a piece of leaf litter clogging the spring plug, backwashed from the way I took out the filter canister. Had to peek into that valve with a flashlight and some dental picks to get enough crud out for it to hold water.
Also, in that small >20gal test setup, the water warmed up fairly quickly in the March sunlight. Might need to make sure the full-scale 110+ gallon system won't get too hot for the native species I want to keep. Will probably start out with some orange-colored fathead minnows and monitor the temperature closely.

Yep. But I'm planning to do my first round of stocking with some fatheads, which aren't. They are tolerant of warmer temperatures, though.

Tried to clear-coat my PVC plant shelf/tank divider frame with the clear Plasti-Dip spray. Didn't work too well; every coat had just enough solvent in it to dissolve the thin membrane of the previous coat in some places. So I let it fully cure, rolled it off with my fingers, brushed the remainder off with an old T-shirt, and am just going to use Krylon.


edit: pics!



Rubbery Plasti-Dip getting peeled off:



Also, I realized I forgot to link this in the "yep" post a couple of weeks ago. Krylon has a long history in the hobby even if they won't sign their name to it.

In other news, my delays have a legit reason now! I switched jobs and will be working a lot of OT for the forseeable future, fortunately most of what's left is just putting things in the right spot rather than fabrication. I have a 3-day weekend and am going to use it to prep things like the substrates and order plants.

I also decided to give myself just a little more margin on my outflow pipe by rearranging the bog filter (raising it up by a paver, lowering the lowest fountain by the same) and narrowing the outflow pipe. I cut a 1/2 inch thick ring of 1" ID PVC pipe and cramming it into the outgoing side of the elbow. No paint, no cement, it won't be visible from outside. Should reduce the amount of splashing and water loss.

Work has been killing me dead, so not much progress has been done.

Last week I lashed together the 3 caster dollies that will support the tank and let me move it around somewhat. Each is rated to hold 1,000 pounds, and the full tank itself should only just exceed that by a little bit. I also tested how well it will insulate the ground below them from the hot sun. I'm putting an underlayer of corrugated plastic between them and the tank. Even with only a little rainwater in the tank, when it was placed on top of the covered dollies it kept the paved patio underneath significantly cooler than the exposed areas during a few hot days. The final build will have a facade built up around the whole thing which should help even more, and I'll probably try to add some foam insulation between the facade and the tank itself to beat the heat as much as possible.


A couple of weeks ago I washed out my black sand substitute. It's Black Diamond blasting grit, which is made from vitrified coal slag. The "vitrified" part should keep anything nasty from leaching out into the water. Vitrification is also used to make spent nuclear materials more stable and less soluble; in coal slag, the vitrification is automatic (the stuff turns to glass in the heat of the furnace). It has a couple of decades of use in the hobby at this point as a way WAY cheaper alternative to specialty black sands sold for aquarium use. Compared to the going price of for something like Petco's store brand stuff ($9/5lbs) at less than $20 for a 50lb bag BD is an absolute steal.

The gross part is that you have to wash it A LOT compared to most substrates. It's super dusty and a little oily out of the bag, and the first rinse looks like bubbling witch's brew and tar. I found that rinsing with plain water from a hose takes absolutely forever, but putting just a drop of Dawn dish soap in after the first rinse helps speed the process along tremendously. The churning and multiple rinses necessary to clean the stuff should also remove any traces of the detergent.






Hopefully the two 50lb bags I have will be enough. I plan to use this as a 1" cap over a roughly 1" layer of a mixture of stuff: sand, local clay, and un-amended organic topsoil. I'm going to try for some river-friendly rooted plants at the bottom of the tank.

The window I installed should help them get sufficient light. I'm trying to track down some Heteranthera dubia, but it's difficult to find the real stuff (a native plant that loves streams and creeks) versus H. zosterifolia, an exotic species that's far more common in the fish hobby.

My other plan is to get some Ceratophyllum demersum, a cheap, fast-growing, and readily available native plant that has no roots at all and must be anchored to something, but does well with some water flow. (So many aquarium plants are slackwater species that don't like much current). It's also supposed to have some beefed-up anti-algal properties. This is all to get some plant action going on below the surface of the water. For emergent growth I'm still planning on using my few locally-harvested swam weeds with some supplemental help by evergreen bog plants and a few seasonable perennials to help suck nutrients out of the water.

BTW, my arrowheads (Sagittaria latifolia) and my softrush (Juncus effusus) are still thriving after nearly two years, and the latter has finally started flowering. I swear these things are bullet-proof as long as you keep them fed.


So I really need to start dividing and transplanting some of them to get them established in the pond during peak growing season.

I keep talking about my plant plans but it's about time to finally commit.

To that end I've decided to add to my purchases of planters a couple of kidney-shaped basket types, which SHOULD contour nicely to the curved walls of the stock tank at either end. They won't arrive for a couple of weeks, and I'll have to figure out a way to mount them to the tank walls. But hopefully they'll increase my options for emergent plantings.
I also settled on a wavemaker to provide the flow for the tank. This one has a magnetic mount which I hope will be strong enough for the relatively thick walls of the stock tank. User videos show it doing pretty well on glass that's about 1/4 inch thick. That's the same as the walls of the stock tank (I still have the piece I cut out to install the window, so I measured with some callipers). Suction cups don't work on its irregularly-molded surface and I'd like to avoid adding yet another custom build solution to the project.

While waiting for the last few pieces to come in, I'm thinking of starting up my 56-gallon indoor aquarium just to get some practice in and have a place to stow my plants as they arrive. I haven't perfected the custom light fixture yet, but it should be workable if ugly without the DIY closure around it.