Traditional Japanese Style Rice Fish Patio Pond in Zen Garden: Easy Maintenance/ Feed & Breed

Hello everyone, how have you been? Today I'd love to share with you how I set up my latest Japanese rice fish patio pond, which is the upgraded version of my previous mini pond. Also, I'm gonna be sharing with you what I did to maintain the pond and look after my fish to breed. The first thing I did was preparing the green water in spring. Green water is nutrient-rich water which has phytoplankton in abundance. It's so handy to have it ready to raise the fry and plankton. I just added about 2-3 cups of fish tank water into dechlorinated water in a bucket, then left it outside in the sunny area. During the time, I sometimes stir the water to aerate. And within the months, it turned light green. This is my previous mini pond. I transformed this area to a Japanese-style Zen garden a year ago and installed this pond with Japanese rice fish. I managed to keep all of my fish alive and breed some fry. In this way, it went well, but I was annoyed with some of the cares like changing water or separating fry from the adult fish. So this time, I wanted to make a more efficient pond. Thankfully, I received a lot of helpful advice from some of my lovely viewers. So I decided to try their ideas to find the easier, cheaper and more natural ways that work for me but could be different from the common method. Okay, let's get started. I decided to upgrade my mini pond and I bought this large bowl from Bunnings DIY garden and hardware shop. The diameter of this bowl is 60cm or 24 inches. This is a 85L capacity bowl. My older bowl was 60L size and deeper than my new one. It was nothing wrong with it, but I wanted to have more surface area for my fish to swim around or hide and allow nature to have more chances to be a part of the pond. I like this shape because it's not too deep. If the pond is deep, you can't see things at the bottom. Also, plants in the water can't grow as the sunlight doesn't reach to the bottom. Alright, let's make a new pond. First, I need to plug the hole at the bottom. My husband helped me to cover the hole with JBL 2 part epoxy bond. Place a piece of duct tape on the bottom to cover the hole first. Then fill the bond from inside. I left it outside to cure for 2 days. Next, I made the overflow. I drilled a small hole, then covered it with a piece of mesh. I used screen window mesh and placed it with epoxy glue. As we have thunderstorms in summer, it helps to prevent fish to fall out of the bowl. This patio pond is based on very old Japanese traditional method created in 1700s, so they don't use filters and rely on natural ecosystem. As a substrate, in Japan, generally people use Akadama soil which helps to keep the pond water clear and helps plants to grow providing the fish great habitat. In Japan, it's available at any garden shops and it's so cheap, but it's not easy to find here. I've spotted some online shops selling that soil, but they are quite expensive especially to get sufficient amount to fill the large bowl. So, I searched for the replacement, and I found hydro clay pebbles. I thought this may work like Akadama soil, but as soon as I placed them in the water, the pebbles floated, so I decided to soak them for a while. But they were still floating after 2 weeks of soaking. This product can't be in my pond, also it is costly as well. In the end, I decided to stick with just normal aquarium pebbles this time. Ok, it's time to say goodbye to my old pond. I cleared area and smoothened and leveled the ground with sand. Then installed a new bowl. I love this shape, I think this bowl looks great in this Japanese style garden. I washed the pebbles to get rid of the dust first. I got those plant pot and bowl. I was planning to place the bowl in the pond and put the smaller pot on top of it. I placed some gravel in the pot and bowl first, then added some garden soil. Look at this lovely 4-leaved water clover. It's called hairy nadu. Their stems will grow upright when it's in shallow water, and leaves will float on the surface when it's submerged. This will look beautiful in my new pond and provide a nice shade area for the fish. I picked up this weed from my backyard called spiny rush again. I like the long straight leaves. The pond will look great when the plants has a bit of variety in shape. I added bishop's weed from my old pond. It has lovely heart shaped leaves. I topped the pond with pebbles to prevent soil to float in the pond. Ok, my pot is ready. The plant bowl I prepared was relatively big and had a lot of new dirt in it, so I rinsed it first. This is my absolute favorite aquatic plant. It's mosaic plant. The little diamond shaped leaves are so gorgeous. I definitely put it in my bowl. Also, I picked this Australian native water lily called water snowflake. It's almost weed here, but it has beautiful heart shaped leaves and little white flowers like snowflakes. I trimmed the root first and planted in the bowl. I added some water pennywort. It's from my old pond. This time I tried to put plenty of plants in my pond because plants act like filter and oxygenate the water. Topped with some pebbles. Then I rinsed the whole thing again. In the pond, I placed two large bags of aquarium pebbles. Each bag is 10 kilos or 22 pounds. I put the bowl of water lilies on the pebbles. It has to be completely submerged. Then I placed a water clover on top. My pond looks like a water fountain or some sort. Anyway, I added some decorative polished rocks around the pot to give a little bit of style. Now it's exciting time. Let's fill up the pond. I noticed that the water lily bowl is too tall for this layout. Even if I fill up the water to the maximum level, the surface is less than an inch above the top of the pot. It's not good enough because the pond water will always evaporate and that means the water level will be usually lower than that. So I changed to the smaller bowl and removed the decorative rocks as well. Then filled up the water again. During the first few days, I changed the water three times just to get rid of the dirty water from the soil in the plant pots. After I removed water for the last time, I decided to arrange the layout a bit. Instead of stacking the pot on the bowl, I added one more bag of pebbles to raise the base level up and add extra pebbles on the back of the lily bowl to create the gentle slope. Then place the pot there. I lay the rocks around the pot to secure it in place. I think this layout is better because it gives difference in the depth and the shallow area will be a good hiding space for the little fry. I added some more aquarium plants from my fish tank. Then added water for the last time. It looks good. It's getting there. To complete this design, I added water hyacinth. They will be great for the fish to breed on their roots. Next day, I topped up the pond with some water from fish tank adding some bacteria to the new water to speed up the process of establish the pond. You can see some bits from panda grass floating on the water. I tested the pH in my pond. It's about 6.5. It's looking good. I picked 12 fish from my tank here. The round one is dalma medaka. I adjusted the water temperature same as the pond and slowly add the pond water little by little for my fish to be ready for moving into the new home. I used to feed my fish mainly goldfish or tropical fish food. But this time, I tried to add more live food in their diet. Generally, live food has more nutrients and it doesn't contaminate the water as much as other food does. Also, it's important for the rice fish to be well fed to breed. So I started feeding them the easiest live food which was mosquito larvae. I don't like to grow mosquitoes at home. So basically, I just feed them every time I find them. For information, this container had rainwater and dried leaves sitting outside for a long time. It seems to attract mosquitoes. Oh, my fish love them. I had to travel overseas and couldn't look after my fish for 3 weeks. I left a feeding block in the pond while I was awake. By the way, I made a cover for the pond to protect my fish because we have not only 3 curious cats but wild birds and cane toads. I can see some fry swimming already. So cute. As I don't have a filter here, algae is growing so much. If I use akadama soil and more water plant, it might be different. But the fish didn't seem to bother it. Also, tiny fry are swimming on the algae blanket. Actually, it looks like it's protecting them from adult fish. I did a quick cleaning just picking up some algae with a plastic fork and didn't touch the baby fish areas. While I was awake, it had been hot and sunny so the water level was a bit low. I topped with new water. I always have several buckets of water outside to keep it handy for my fish. It's good to have extra green water as well. I added 10 shrimps and 5 ramson snails. They disappeared somewhere in the pond as soon as I put them in the water. Hopefully, they can help to clean the pond feeding on algae and leftover fish food. As I have now cute little fry in my pond, I stopped feeding mosquito larvae because they can possibly eat my fry. So I started looking for some alternatives and did some experiment. First, I collected water from a natural pond. Divide it into two parts. Add a bit of water from my new pond. Then for this bottle, I gave a bit of matcha green tea powder. For the other bottle, I added a tiny bit of yeast. Let's see which one works better. I gently shook both of the bottles to aerate them. And kept them in a light place. I shook the bottles at least twice a day. And other than that, I left the lids open. Now see something moving around in the water. I think the ones that are hopping in the water are some sort of water flea, maybe Daphnia or Moenidae. They seem to eat a lot. So I added little more matcha and yeast. The matcha bottle increased the number of water fleas. But I couldn't see the movement in the yeast bottle. I think I fed them too much yeast. Maybe yeast is more sensitive in terms of feeding amount. I can see lots of water fleas hopping in the matcha bottle. I decided to pick some of them up and grow them in a separate bottle. I collected 6 water fleas. I may not need to do that. But I wanted to reduce the risk of accidentally breeding other unknown things. So I used dechlorinated water instead of pond water. And matcha powder only to start with. I added little more matcha powder on the third day. Again, they reproduced a lot. I transferred them into the bucket of green water. I stirred the water 2-3 times a day to aerate. Wow, look at this, I can see thousands of little hoppers. I think they are Moenidae. Let's give them to my fish. They are eating like pigs. When the population of water flea increases too much, they die due to the lack of food or oxygen. So every time they reproduce a lot, before it gets out of control, I scoop them up with a fine mesh net and feed them to my fish. Then I add pond water or green water to feed them. See, these guys look pinkish now. That means they are not getting enough oxygen. I should use an air bubbler. I prepared another bucket of Moenidae. It's good to have some backup as they could die all of the sudden when something goes wrong or ruins the cycle. My water hyacinth is growing fast. It doubled the size already. If I leave it like that, my fish will eventually lose their swimming space. So I am cutting back to the original size now. Rice fish often breed on the roots of this plant. I can't see any eggs at the moment. But I believe there are some in the roots. So I keep it in the green water bucket. There you go. I spotted the first baby later on the same day. And there will be more in a few days. Within the first week, I've got about 20 fry. If they are in the green water, they can eat microbes in the water. So I hardly feed them for the first two weeks. After that, they need more food. I give them my powdered food and ammonity. My water hyacinth is flowering. These fry are about three weeks old now. I think they are ready to go back to the main pond. I used to keep my fry in a separate bowl for a longer period to wait until they reach to over 15 mm long as I was worried about them eaten by the adult fish. Yes, adult fish do eat tiny fry sometimes. But I noticed that keeping the fry in the temporary environment for a long time would more likely kill them than adult fish in the pond. These guys are about 12 mm long. They look big enough to go back to my main pond. Enjoy your new home, kids. This is how my pond looks now. Can you see lots of little fish swimming? This time I haven't separate the little fry from adult fish but I ended up getting lots of new fish. Compared to my previous pond, this large pond was a lot easier to look after the fish. All I did as maintenance was removing the excess algae and topping up the fresh dechlorinated water when the pond water level dropped. The pond water gets low when it evaporates or when I used to make green water or feed the plankton. The rain does a great job too. I can see some more little babies at the back there. Oh, I always get excited to see the new fish. Honestly, considering the amount of care I made, I've got quite good result this time. I think it's because this pond has a large surface area which gives plenty of space for fish to hide and this large size makes it easier to balance or stabilize the cycle in the pond. I want to say big thank you to my beautiful audience who helped me by sharing their knowledges and experience. And thank you all so much for watching this video. Hope it was helpful and hope you have a great day. Love you all. Bye.