Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations DYI floating island.

A few pictures of our floating island we built yesterday.

4" drain tile.
1 drain tile connector.
1 bundle of 6" X 22.5" rockwool insulation.
1 can urethane foam.
100 zip ties black.
1 bag of pet moss.
1 roll of nylon ever green tree winter wrap.

Some light poly and two 4X8 sheet of plywood for assembly.

First we picked a size that would suit our pond. Then filled the drain tile with used water bottles with lids tightened. Use tile connector to connect the tile ends together. Placed poly down on a sheet of plywood. Placed the tile on plywood and fill the center with insulation. Now spray the urethane foam in the joints of the insulation where the bails meet. The poly is so the urethane will not stick to the plywood or floor.

Let foam dry then flip the island onto another sheet of plywood then pull poly off. Place nylon tree wrap over island. Flip again so you have the tree wrap on the bottom. Then place the peat moss on top of the top of the island. Place more tree wrap on the top. Using zip ties pull tree wrap tight and zip tie to drain tile. Using many zip ties I went right around the center of island to pull the two sides together nicely.

Drain tile sizing.
Filling tile with water bottles.
Insulation in place and urethane for more middle floating of island.
Laying out tree wrap to fit.
PLacing peat moss on top side.
Final product ready for anchors and plants.

The next step is to pick out plants and install some anchors. When installing plants we will make a small slit in the tree wrap and install plants in the rockwoll medium.

Before installing we will cover the drain tile with some burlap or jute to dress it up a bit and let the turtles have some grip.

Cheers Don.

Here is a photo of the island floating in the pond. The grasses will come back but the potato vine green and purple as well as the spider plant on the end will not come back.

Just a small slit in the netting and plant the plants in the peat moss and rockwool.

This is an old picture now. Swimming all the roots are out the bottom of the island with all the plants.

Cheers Don.

How did your island do this summer. Did it fill in much over the summer. I'm looking at trying one myself. Did you seed the peat with a grass seed or just plant what is showing in the picture. Anything you would do differently?
Thanks

Cody Note: Yes many would be interested in an update of how your floating island performed this past year and in the future. Would you build more. IMO it was pretty small to do very much water quality improvement. There is likely a sqft size of floating island per nutrient load of dissolved nitrogen and phosphorus bound or sequestered per acre foot of water. Lusk should get Bruce Kania to write an article about this specific topic.

+1 to Bill C's comment regarding a Pond Boss article. I would read and devour every word.

Do you leave the island in the water over winter. If so, how does it handle the freeze?

I would like to see an article as well.

That is pretty darn neat Dono!

I dare not show it to my wife or I will have another project on my todo list.

A little update on the floating island.
We do keep it in the pond all year. The line we had it tied to has been broken off for a few years now. We just let it float around the pond where ever the wind wants to take it.

The cloth we used on the sides has basically all rotted away now and we just have the black plastic sides as is. The frogs love this island and now will spawn on it and spend the entire summer floating around on it.

Come spring I will post up some pictures of it and the grasses we have growing on it. There is such a root mass under that the island will be grounded if in 4 feet of water.

The main structure of the island has held together very well for 5 years with out touching it. Some wild grasses have started on the island and in the spring we will see the odd duck or goose on it.

Cheers Don.

Welcome back to the PB Forum. Thanks a lot for the informative Island up-date. Do you ever see any fish associated with the island? We are looking forward to seeing some current pictures of the island and the summer progresses. It would also be nice to have an informative up-date in another thread about the condition of your fishery. Maybe place the fish update in one of your older pond post threads or start a new post.

Yes for sure,

We do see many small minnows like really small around the island.

The perch pond is doing very very well. We do remove all the ribbons we can and will only catch one or two perch in our minnow traps every year. Let me dig back into some of my older posts and do a write up. I have learned so much since 2012 with this perch fishery.

Cheers.

welcome back and thanks again for sharing your wisdom! The forum had some recent new joiners posting from ontario asking for help with pond construction and management. If you do a google search you might find those threads else we can post them here again. You might be able to help them as well.

Curious if your shiners (I think you had emerald shiners?) can keep themselves going despite the hungry YP feeding on them?

Donno, I think the "then vs. now" picture of the island will be a great comparison. I'll bet it has changed a LOT over the years.

DonoBBD - how do I get access to see the pics at the top of the thread?

Dono trying to link to the description of DIY 6 items to build the floating island in your first post gives this statement: You need access. Ask for access, or switch to an account with access

Dono loaded pictures to his googledrive but then made them 'private'

He would have to change permissions to make them 'public' Or if there isn't that many he can use the upload manager and attach the pictures as attachments to his post (or another post or two if there is a limit)

you have pics of the island?

The emerald shiners are in there but not as many as the common shiners we have. We have to trap them deeper than the common shiners. The YP are on average about 13" and really love the crayfish. As soon as the crayfish get to about 1" in the late spring they just feed on them. Every perch we catch has crayfish in them.

If I could figure out how to make my google drive public again I would. Just spent the last 10 minute on my google account and can't find where and how to do that.

I did up load them to this thread some how lol.

Cheers Don.

Dono, thanks for the attached pics that show the construction steps for your floating island.

Hopefully you will inspire some imitators!

I was able to get a stack of coke bottle crates that have a small matrix of openings on the bottom (maybe 1/2 size mesh). I was thinking that I could connect them together and make a small platform. I was thinking about putting spray foam insulation in the gaps between each one for buoyancy (I’ll try to post a pic of them later which would aid in my description). If the spray foam is not in the sun, will it degrade?

Here is one of those commercial floating islands. The holes in it are approximately 8" diameter and go all the way through. There is some fabric at the bottom to hold the dirt in place. It is recommended to use dirt that is made for hydroponic gardening. The island is either 6'x8' or 8'x10'.

If you plant some native milkweed in that youd have butterflies flying all around your pond all year.

Just saying

Esshup - is that yours? If so, you mind me asking how much they cost? (BTW - I tried posting the pics of my idea with the coke crates from off my iPhone, but this did not like my file format for some reason…)

No, it was one of the ones that a customer purchased. He's got 6 of them on his pond. Even if I remembered the price, it was around 6 years ago so the price would be different.

https://midwestfloatingisland.com/ Here's their website, give them a call. I think the shipping was just slightly less than the price of the island - truck freight because of the size.

To post a picture here you have to use an on-line image hosting site like imgur or something like that. Store the picture there, copy/paste the share link here.

Well the ice is starting to revile our island. We had a good 24"s of ice this year and the island has been under it all winter. We do not do any maintenance on the island and it just floats around all willy nilly.

The none nylon material has all basically broke down over the years but the soil and grasses still keep coming back every year.

DonoBBD Great pictures and update. Thanks for sharing your pond information. It is very helpful.