My pond outside the bedroom balcony in June
(click on all small photos to see a larger photo.)

Welcome to my pond page. This is the second pond I constructed. It's not finished yet because I still want to add a solar-powered waterfall feature for the pond, and maybe some other pond plants.

Beginning of pond construction

I started construction in November 2003 and had it filled up with water within a week. The stones I use are Bermuda stones I salvaged from the destruction caused by hurricane Fabian back in September, 2003. For liner, I bought some Permalon 20 mil liner from the USA. The pond measures about 3 feet by 3 feet by 2 feet deep.

Beginning of pond construction

Since the weather started to get cold at that time, I only put in 7 mosquito fish (Gambusia affinis) I captured from Bermuda’s City Hall pond to keep the mosquito larva out. As far as I know, these mosquito fish did not breed over the winter. They are voracious eaters and I’m sure if they did have any babies, they were all eaten. I took the mosquito fish out in early May and returned them to the City Hall pond. I was surprised they all survived the winter. They looked rather thin.

My pond in May

I replaced the fish with 4 guppies (Poecilia (Libestes) Reticulata) I got from Jonathan Flood and within a week, I saw babies swimming around. These babies were growing at least twice the rate as the babies I had in my office aquarium. I also put in 3 Red Wag Platies (Xiphophorus Maculatus) in June, 2004.

Bermuda Warwick Lizard sunning at the edge of my pond

I also got some water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) from Craig Morfitt and tossed in some Java Moss (Vesicularia dubyana) I got from Jay Exner. I’m not sure if the Java Moss will do well in an outdoor pond environment. Due to the location of the pond, it was getting pounded by wind from the north in the winter months. The water hyacinth Craig gave me, which had foot-long stalks at the time, started to turn brown and died off from the cold wind burn. They’ve since recovered and are growing a more bulbous stalk than the elongated ones.

I haven't seen any tadpoles or tree frogs in the pond and thought it was weird. The Bermuda tree frog (Eleutherodactylus johnstonei and Eleutherodactylus gossei) usually just laid their eggs in pools of water collected in leaf litters. I found one the other night and thought it would be cool to have one in my pond. I put it on one of the water hyacinths, and it hopped off right away into the water. It looked back at me with all 4 limbs outstretched and sunk like a rock into the dark depth of the pond. I had a sudden horrible flashback of Leonardo DiCaprio sinking into his watery grave from the movie Titanic. Oops.