Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat Easy Island?

I originally put a few bales of straw in my pond to help "clean" the algae/clarity. I tethered them so I could pull them out when they sunk and started to decay. After a year, some are still floating, and weeds growing out of them. They seem to be a zooplankton haven.
I just put a few more in to test their ability to become a floating island. The bass and BG immediately were drawn to them. This may be a good way to start enough biomass for an Island. If any one else has any experiences with using straw bales, please pass it along. Otherwise I'll keep you posted on the experiment.

That sure is an interesting low cost way to make an island.
To insure that they remain floating you could insert sealed lengths of 4" PVC pipe into the bales and cable them togeather to make a big island.
Let us know how your experiment works out.

If the bales are tied together with natural twine and not the synthetic stuff, the twine will degrade within a year.

That sound like it has posibilities. Add a little grass seed, flower seeds, or just small plants.....very interesting.

The sealed pvc (great idea)is what I will be using for any future islands, as opposed to the foam noodles. I made an Island with cedar and foam noodles 2 yrs ago. One of the noodles just disloged due to sun fatigue, and it appears to have chunks bitten out, maybe due to turtles muching on algae growing on it??