More protein for my Climbing Perch

Spotted this guy munching on my kangkung. Off you go into the pond.

Worm castings

This is everywhere in the garden. It looks like worm castings

diy underwater filter

Making a filter to add to a powerhead that I will be putting in the main pond for movement of water.

**video coming soon

 22May2020: version 2.0 used a bigger 1.5 litre Coke bottle.

2 shall become 1

We have been planning to get rid of the 1st test pond filled with guppies. The 2nd pond with the climbing perch wasnt built strong enough to handle the water pressure and began to buckle. It will be dismantled too, and a new, stronger, maybe even deeper pond will be built where the 1st was.

 First job was to remove the guppies

The pond completely dismantled

Other than guppies, we found earthworms, bloodworms, bladder snails and daphnia!

12 May update:

Getting the structure symmetrical with these

Spirit level to roughly make sure the ground is sloping the right direction.

Piece of scrap wood as a reference to make sure the inner wall of the brick pond is straight. 

Various poles and sticks to help place the bricks relative to the opposing side. The bottom pole on the right is from an old vacuum cleaner!

A broken wooden signpost was used for the width.

The problem with recycled bricks is that you will be faced with this a lot...

 

Zoey thinks everything we make is for her...

 

13 May update:

All the bricks from the guppy pond were in place. There was space to properly lay 3 sides. The side closest to the 2nd pond was too close so a temporary thinner/weaker line of bricks was put there. 

The next was to extract bricks from the upper layers of the 2nd pond to install onto the new stronger pond.

 

Down to the last layers of bricks, now to catch the fish. 

There were 5 adults and 2 or 3 juveniles. First in the net was the oldest, biggest, and most amazing one... the one-eyed Jack/Jill...

This was the water from the original pond. Some of it will go into the new pond so as to lessen the difference in water for the fish.

Really sad news... there were only 4 adults and 2 juveniles. Did a search for the missing adult but no luck :(

Moved the pond liner (linoleum) over to the new location and filled it with a mix of old and new water.

The next 24 hours will test the strength of the new pond walls and for leaks from the old liner.

Curry Caterpillar

Found this bugger on our curry leaf. Food for the fish

Strangling the Malabar Spinach and bitter gourd doing good

I used an old badminton racket string to help the Malabar Spinach climb the fence. Unfortunately it was cutting the plant due to the weight of the vine. So added a bit of used bubble wrap to distribute the pressure. 

Harvested quite a bit..

The metal ruler on the bottom left (13 inches from tip to tip) is just for scale. Check out the size of the leaves in the white basket on the right!

Our neighbour as a few bitter gourd plants in a pot outside and is using our fence to climb. It's coming along well...

With a little help from our neighbour

The brinjal plants havent produced much at all. And any fruit has been tiny. This one was a result of our neighbour helping and adding her compost tea to the plant.

Double the size of our past efforts.

If you want a perpetual supply of kangkung

This was my harvest from one box today...

If you wanted that quantity every 2 or 3 days, all you need are 4 boxes like this...

You can see the leftmost box which has just been harvested. Notice some yellow leaves on the bottom from the shoots that did not get enough light. 

I harvest from right to left every couple of days. The rightmost box is ready and will be cut in a day or 2.

This method has been serving us for months now. No idea if they will stop producing since many have sprouted flowers. I will let you know if they slow down to a pace that cant meet our demand. 

Today's harvest

A little bit of kangkung going to my mum.

And one whole tree of ulam raja for our lunch. It won't amount to much so it will be added to a curry.