The Living Pond: Water Gardens with Fish & Other Creatures Review

by Amy Voros

The Living Pond: Water Gardens with Fish & Other Creatures, by Helen Nash, provides a nice overview of the variety and types of water gardens that an individual might want to build to suit either goldfish, Koi, frogs or to attract local wildlife, with primary emphasis being given to Koi and goldfish.

Care of creatures is an important consideration if you are planning to create a living ecosystem in your back yard. This would be a great resource for the first time pond builder, giving you a solid overview of the process of caring for a pond with living creatures.

The Living Pond provides a nice variety of topics from considering if you need filtration, to pond-care season-by-season, ways of assessing the health of your fish, Ph and other chemical balances in your pond among others. She does not give much guidance on picking the type of pond building materials you should consider, but instead focuses on the maintenance aspects. This is a very strong feature of this book, as many first-time pond builders have not considered how to maintain their creations to help them stay beautiful.

She focuses mostly on koi and goldfish, talking about appropriate filtration, feeding, care, disease care, water maintenance, and fish transportation. You will find signs to watch for if your fish are becoming sick, how water quality factors affect fish health, basic information on how to treat fish health problems.

The Living Pond also devotes a couple of chapters to ponds that attract birds and amphibians, as well as considerations for building these ponds including pumps, size and filtration options. There is also a mention of insects, how to deal with them or attract beneficial species or beautiful insects including a section on earth friendly gardening.

The Living Pond includes several useful lists of plants that are good for specific purposes, combinations of fish that should not be raised together. There are also numerous pictures explaining different types of fish problems, water garden layouts, landscaping ideas, etc. It also includes some unique tidbits such as the fact that koi love watermelon; stringing together a few pieces for them to enjoy makes it easier for you to fish out the rinds later.

This book would certainly serve as a resource for someone thinking about building a water garden, or thinking about adding fish or plants to an existing one. Retail price is $24.95.

The Living Pond: Water Gardens with Fish & Other Creatures

Discount pond kits, pond pumps, and other pond supplies

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