Pond Plant Concerns

[Carp4U]

Bought 3 pond planter kits from the garden section of B&Q today.. I have 1 Bog Iris, 1 Red Waterlily and 1 Pickerel Hyacinth. I guess you probably know what I mean, they come in the plastic tubs in a cardboard wrapper with the bulb/rhizome in a bag which you plant in another bag of planting soil/fibre stuff and it tells you where to plant them. A couple of years ago I bought 4, 1 waterlily and 1 other. The other 2 never grew and died off.

What concerns me is that all of the plants say not suitable for ponds with koi carp, and also to remove fish before planting as they can cause clouding.
I never removed any fish last time (when I had 5 koi carp and some shubumpkins in my 2.5m x 1.5m x 0.80m deep pond), and I have had my carp living healthily ever since and the plants have been growing well.

Will I be alright to plant the pond plants like I have done in the past, even though it says not to use with koi carp?

 

[Baccus]

The suppliers porbably say to remove any fish first partly beause there is probably fertlizers or some such thing in the potting media that will most likely make your water go haywire for a bit- it all really depends on what type of potting media they have supplied it could make all the water either too acidic or alkaline. Also the plants will be young and not firmly rooted into the media so any large fish will most likely pull them out, and lastly goldfish or any carp are great eaters of plants and they will view any new succulent growth as fair game and happily munch it to death before it can get established. I have a 1000L round horse trough that I use as a pond and I put a bed of sand in the bottom and weighed the Water Lily down on the sand with some bricks. This allows the roots to spread across the entire floor of the pond and prevents my comets from destroying the entire plant. The bricks also become hiding places for some of the fish especially the large bessa bricks.

 

[Carp4U]

Thanks for your advice. I didn't have any sand or anything, so I put them in the pots as instructed. They didn't seem to cloud the water much, except leave a bit of soil floating on top which I netted out. Hopefully the fish will be ok. I have turned the filter and pump off for a while to let the water settle down a bit.

 

[Baccus]

Thanks for your advice. I didn't have any sand or anything, so I put them in the pots as instructed. They didn't seem to cloud the water much, except leave a bit of soil floating on top which I netted out. Hopefully the fish will be ok. I have turned the filter and pump off for a while to let the water settle down a bit.

A really handy trick I have found when putting potted plants into a pond is to put a layer of gravel over the top of the potting media. This helps hold the potting media in the pot and also adds a bit more weight to to pot. In the past I have used blue metal, fish tank gravel, or even just largish pebbles.