Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat Synthetic grass structure

A local business has started selling synthetic grasses that imitate something like curly leaf pond weed. The benefits are that it will never over spread. Minus' I'm not a fan of what is essentially plastic that will be broken down and ingested by the food chain and ultimately me.


I've often thought of the same plastic issues with the pvc structure.

Thoughts?

Some plastics are more prone to breaking down in a particular environment, while others can last a long time. But' I'm with you with respect to using plastics in my pond. I do have plastic floats on my dock, plastic duck decoys to mark the diffusers, pvc plumbing on the diffusers, rubber hose too, and some vinyl coated mesh at my overflow pipe, but nothing that I could get too lazy to take out if it started to fall apart. I actually have more plastic in the pond than I thought.

As far as fake greenery, I'm not doing it. First off, I'm to tight to spend the money, and it does not set well with me for fear that I would end up spending a lot of time fishing the garbage out once it failed. I guarantee the cheap plastic greenery (if that even exists) would be an issue real quick. I remember having plastic plants in aquariums many years ago. They would start falling apart between 5 and 10 years old and have to be replaced. That's in a climate controlled environment. Fake pond greenery would have to be made out of some high-end plastics. That stuff could out last me, maybe, but someone will have to deal with it eventually.

Oh, the fake stuff will not pull nutrients from the pond or produce O2...guaranteed!

An alternative to plastics is to use organic materials like slower decaying trees (think cedar). One advantage is that that the wood is a store of energy that a portion of the periphyton community can use. Substrate like brush provides habitat for periphyton and some of this community's members do consume nutrients directly from the water and so additions of brush can help to clarify water and provide competition to phytoplankton and macro pond plants. The food is larger and in denser concentration than phytoplankton. Unlike macro pond plants, nutrients in the periphyton are available to support the food chain in summer months when they are most needed. Numerous studies document the improvement of productivity when the only differentiating factor is brush. Brush isn't a panacea. It rots and as it does it loses its effectiveness to perform this function.

Cedar trees for me.

Valid points and just affirmed my own thoughts on the subject. More natural, the better.

Agreed.

One of the joys of adding a cedar tree to the pond ... is that is means there is one less cedar tree in your field!

Just grow real plants that the fish and other wildlife can use. I have a number of water lilies going now, Illinois pond weed, and some eel grass. I have to fence it to get it established because everything loves to eat on it. I have an area fenced by my dock. It has a number of lilies. It's like watching an aquarium with all the small fish in and around them.