Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat Structure

I have access to an almost unlimited amount of the orange plastic pipe that surrounds fiber optic cable. Plan to do some regular ones like shown here and on crappie.com; but... Some of the scrap pieces are fairly long (15 - 20 feet). I'm wonder if could put one end (of bunch of them) into old plastic cattle tubs, dump in cement, cap off other end, and then put in deep areas of pond. Theory is that trapped air would keep pipe floating straight up and provide cover throughout a wide verticle area. What do you think?

That sounds great. Would you be able to run some horizontal pieces through the pipes for the "tree' effect? On second thought, that would probably lead to the air escaping.
What is the diameter of the pipe?

Will work well sounds to me. How slick is the plastic? might want to roughen it up to get bio film to start growing well. How deep and how long will you leave the pieces?

After about a month and didn't rough up at all..

Diameter varies. Most of it is 1" or 1.25" inside diameter. Quite a bit of it is 2" inside diameter. Have also gotten some PVC ranging from 4" inside diameter to 16 inch inside diameter. Some of the pieces are 30' long. One roll of black 1" diameter pipe is perhaps two hundred feet long.

Dont over do it. You just need a few spots in key places..

I do not think there is a need to rough the smooth pipe up. Algae seems to grow on smooth pipe just fine. We made some with some pipes between 15 and 20 foot long. We just let them hang out there and create a larger structure clusters. Also, we used cinder blocks to hold them and buried the blocks to where just the upper few inches of the block was showing. This allowed the blocks to stay up.

I agree with Peepaw. Rough the pvc up a little for faster growth of plants and to make it easier for critters to move around and hang on to the surface. Easy to do. One stroke with rough sand paper or a wire brush or steel wool or a wire brush attachment to a drill. Not absolutely necessary but an aid..

Have been on this forum less than an hour now and already found a great idea for my new pond. Great Idea! I will be building a new pond this year and I will try to cement my pipe in before it fills.

Stick around. These guys are a wealth of knowledge, and they're not afraid to share it either!

Yeah, and sometimes we don't agree with whatever we call wisdom.

Steve, why are you cementing the overflow pipe?

I think Steve wants to cement structure pipe in his pond while it's empty.

Like Blair said. I am thinking it would be a good idea to dig large post holes and take some 6ft pieces of plasic water lines, cap the ends, and then shove them in the concrete. Then if all goes as planed they should rise to the surface.

Isn't most of that kind of pipe pretty rigid? Can't see air doing much good,should hold it's shape without.

Since FHM deposit their eggs on the under side of structures but many predators eat the eggs, would laying bundles of 1/2 inch ID. of 10 foot long PVC tubing weighted down horizontally allow the eggs to go mostly unmolested since many larger predators couldn't get to them? It would be nice if FHM could sustain their population.

That would in concept increase egg/fry survival. However the main reason for poor FH population survival is the ease of predators feasting on adult FH. More egg/fry survival would increase the total forage base for a while but I am not sure it would help long term FH population survival as the # and size of the predators increase to match the food supply.

FHM are doing quite well here in Illinois in these structures

FHM habitat

If I put some tubing in my pond is 1/2" inside diameter too small for the FHM to swim in to deposit their eggs or should I go to something bigger? They would have to get by each other also or they would create a traffic jam.

I'd use something much larger, say 6"-8" dia. I think a flat surface is preferred, but don't know for sure.

Scott you're correct - I use pieces of 4 - 12" PVC scraps in 1-2' lengths and place them on their sides in 1-3' depth all around the pond edge. FHM loved them, so did the YOY SMB in my repro ponds. The white PVC allows a nice backdrop and makes all activity much more visible underwater. PVC scraps like this around Lincoln are readily available and free.

Any great trick to ensuring the pipe stays in desired position in container with concrete while it hardens?

Just shove it in there while the concrete is wet and arrange it how you like.

There is NO wrong way, just different ways.

The reason I was thinking of using small diameter tubing was to allow the small FHM to deposit their eggs without allowing larger predators in to eat their eggs off the top inside of the tubing, thus producing the most fry. My pond will be full of spatterdock lilies with large amounts of under surface leaves to deposit eggs on but the eggs will be wide open for predator egg eating. What I think I will do is lay different size tubing in the shallow water below my deck where I can readily watch the interaction of minnows to tubing size and see what the smallest size tubing the minnows will swim in and out of. And see if they will swim the full length of a ten foot tube of small diameter. If they will accept the small tubing I can envision a dozen 10’ tubes strapped together and weighted.

I think more predation comes from the fry getting eaten after hatching than eggs being eaten.