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Ponds, Environmental Studies, and Lessons in Life...

WED. 9-8-09 (Updated 5-24-10) -- For the past several years I have had a "pond" originally for the dogs enjoyment, to wade in on these hot dog days of summer. This started as one of those $7.00 kiddy pools that one finds in the front of any of the "big box" stores that can be found on Pacheco or north of town in the big city. Well many years later and growing to a now something like a 600+/- gallon pool and going from 12 tiny gold fish (they call them feeder fish at the pet shop), to some 50 of so, various variety of fish living in their own "eco-system," along with a small investment of a few hundred dollars.

This venture has -- no strike that, this adventure is teaching me a lot. Not only on the operation of the pond but on eco-systems, on life, and about the inter-action of life and living things.

I try as much as possible to make this pond as self-sufficient as possible. To circulate water that is needed, I have a pump running the water through a physical bio-filtering system. This water is sucked into the pump via a boxed filter protected pump. From there it goes through the one gallon filter bottle and flows out to the water fall. There are a number of bio-balls in 1 of the pools that help to keep the algae in control.

I am awaiting another pump pushing water through a UV light to kill the undesirable microbes that such a small pond is unable to keep in check. This system also supplies water to my turtle and frog spiters. These spiters hlep in the surface flow and add "airation" to the water. This is all I do to influence or provide "outside" meddling or influence of the pond's eco-system.

Now, for clarification I do not force my pond to have clear clean water 24/7 like those that one finds in their indoor aquarium. Why? Because this is an outdoor aquarium, that is subject of the influences of the weather and outside world; it needs to be self supporting. In my reading up on living in small ponds, I have learned that many of the occupants of my pond actually do enjoy the slightly cloudy, part-time murky water. This reflects what is in nature and is found in many of our natural lakes, streams, and rivers.

One this I am mainly concerned about is the "clarity." This is in part what the UV light produces. This clarity is more important than the "clearness" of the water and help to keep the undesirable life that can occur form moving in. This can help in keeping any diseases in check and from making your fish unnecessarily sick.

Rather than spend extra money for a fancy water sensor, I have a "sump-float switch" to turn off the pumps. Should this nifty device fail, I use the cheap lazy-mans ways to prevent catastrophe. Should a malfunction occur where the water is not returned to the pond, I run my smaller pumps from a higher level in the pond. The main pump is encased in a box that allows the water to "fall in" and keeps a fail safe level should a hose get misplaced or pulled out. This pump was originally put in the fountain filter box, when I found out that the smaller fish could get sucked in. Silly precautions I know, but looking at the other benefits including keeping water in the pond and being able to strain or pre-filter the water before getting sucked into the filtration and water fall system, this does make some sense (well, to me it does).

Now next comes the plants that help feed the fish and contribute to the micro-life, as well as the visitors of the pond. The pond is designed to be self sufficient and the only feeding of the fish is just for entertainment value to both the feeder and the fish, and the occasional visitor to the pond. "Experts" advise that one should not put in more feed than what your fish can consume in 10 minutes. Oh, and the plants also help in providing some of the shade from the hot summer sun. The in pool plants are helped by some of the outside plants, which help in providing shade. Sun is needed to help produce the food the pond life needs to live off of.

There is a fair amount of outside life that influences and visits the pond. In my case this includes our local birds, insects (lots of bees and dragon flies today), and my non-water shy dogs. Many of the fish look forward to such visits thus expanding their contact with the outside world.

Oh, the fish just woke up and are all gather here at the edge of the pond asking me to feed them. I guess I should entertain myself waiting for the inter actions of the minnows establishing their territories and the gold fish as they go pellet diving after their food.

Looking at a living pond one can draw many correlations to real life. Learning how to properly manage the environment, what happens when one plays "Mother Nature," and how life is constantly changing and evolving. I am also able to ponder corollaries between my pond community and our Los Banos community as I sit or stand near by, observing the life that is living in my pond.

This should be a requirement of our children, to manage such a live pond for a year and observe its eco-system and how it lives as a self sufficient community. Learning how changes will affect it, observing the reactions to such changes. Much as our 4H and FFA programs do (hint see the next ramble).

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Fri. 4-14-06 - More rain to day... I know I ave been busy for a while working on a project for our community Los Banos Community Access Group and Public Access Television. You can follow us here.

The Below picture is left here as somehow I missed uploading it last time.

The above picture is the main reason for me rambling here, today.... this is one of the famous and award winning pictures from Hal Randall, the official picture taker of the Cow Palace. I was invited to share this picture after some friends heard of the story of our 4H and FFA students in town this past March and April. As you can see these kids DO learn life's consequences, as shown in this picture. Many of you may recall seeing this picture in your visits to the Cow Palace and is was in many of the programs and an enlarged version was in the main lobby of the area. Hopefully along with the knowledge of the need for an enlarged facility at the high school's ag farm, you may be inspired to help the school district to provide accommodations for all of our kids in these programs.

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Sat. 7-9-05 - It looks like the weather has finally moved on to our normal 100 degree days.

I just love to call techs they are not listening to the symptoms and then directing us to do irrelevant steps to what they think will solve the issue. I recently had a mail server giving me a "you have exceeded you allotted message size" or similar message. I told this to the tech. The ask, "What e-mail client are you using?" I told them and they said their system does not support Eudora, only Outlook Express and the web based gui. I told them again the message on the problem was an error message from the "smtp mail server." I then asked them why a different mail client would result in a different outcome. they could not answer... Point made, Rant stopped...

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Sun. 6-6-05 - Non-tech related, but almost as important for us here in the Los Banos area... Bothered by those pesky moths? Try checking out what The Carey Brothers have to say on this web page. No that is NOT a moth in the picture.

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Wed. 5-26-05 - What a difference a week to ten days make. Summer IS here! Hopefully this is not a prelude for what this summer will bring us, all these HOT zzs Like I remind my fellow firefighters, make sure you drink plenty of the proper liquids. Water is BEST! For seniors, check out out city's senior's activities. These are in air conditioned buildings.

I can't find a good picture for change to up there. It's off to shooting some more pictures, to share for here, this week.

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Wed. 5-17-05 - WOW... Seems like speaking of the weather brought back some of those "Spring Time" weather events. Showers, and wind. We "weather spotters" have been put on notice a few times for the potential thunderstorms and associated flood watches. Fortunately none of these conditions have been observed here in Los Banos. Enjoy the cooler sunny days, I am told it will be a long hot summer this year. Oh, FYI Fire Season has been declared on Monday (5-16-05).

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Wed. 5-14-05 - Well boys and girls... It appears that despite that one day of over an inch of rain here in town, we are now in a summer weather pattern. Up into the high 80's and low 90's already with no "spring time." Well not entirely true I have been told that wind and deluge is our spring time weather.

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Wed. 5-4-05 - From the looks of things the May Day in Los Banos (our annual Spring time Fair here in town) has been a total success. We had a little rain, about .22 inches by measurement of the “Fairgrounds Area” weather station that reports to NOAA in Hanford. And we saw the return of a little breeze, just to make it feel like fair time, to all the old timers. Yet we had beautiful weather on the weekend, despite those late appearing clouds. It was nice to see those big crowds inside, and all the people parking all around the fairgrounds.

I think the turnout for the parade was an excellent two hour show for those that packed the streets. I don’t think there was anywhere where people were not lined on both sides of the streets.

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Thurs. 4-28-05 - Well it is raining so the fair must be on. Yes we got our annually May Day Fair drizzle. Well, a little over two tenths of an inch over night. Stopping in time so far for fair time during the day.

Am I the only one who HATES these automated telephone answering trees? I have been struggling with one international electronic company. It only me 90 minuets today to get a live person in the correct department. Why do companies think it's cost effective to have a non-responsive computer answer and direct your call. Often times, if you do not give the proper response it fails to respond or find some equally competent robotic live person to further elevate your high blood pressure. Thus these businesses lose customers and potential customers with their lack of or their appearance in the lack of... prompt customer service.

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Sun. 4-10-05 - "If the wind is blowing it must be fair time." and yes, the wind HAS been blowing. Los Banos's May Day /Spring Fair is around the corner. Lots of fun and excitements there.

On an unrelated note. I have looked at the way our software has progressed over the past 15 or so years. Back in the late `80's and early `90's we had commercial and shareware. Some where freeware (first coming from the older editions of shareware) popped up as did open source. I find it strange that Linux an open source operating system has so few problems and not near as subject to the "hack attack" that Windows is. On the few occasions that Linux has a problem (usually with the code of the OS and not as much with a vulnerability), the who community pulls together and fixes it - thus, open source. But Windows with so much code involved has to have a "Critical Update." And how many of the updates do we have a year?

I will say that when first released Windows did a GREAT job of Mackintosh'ing a PC. (Making the PC easier to operate for the masses.) But with all the "Trojans, Spyware, and Viruses" it seem to have lost it's appeal. I have to(and you should also if you run a windows PC) constantly run the windows updates and spyware checkers as well as keep my constantly running virus protection up to date. What a pain to run an OS that Bill Gates calls "safe and secure."

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Fri. 3-18-05 - Looks like rain this weekend. This after a little rest from all those winter storms that have given us about a half an inch over our annual seasonal normal rainfall. I's nice to know that we will have a surplus of water to recharge the aqua fur. Hopefully we will add to the rain deficit in the northern half of the state, things are not the best up there.

I trust all enjoyed St. Patty's Day yesterday and are all ready for Easter next weekend. Oh, don't forget the Easter Egg Hunt tomorrow at Snow Goose Park.

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Tues. 3-15-05 - Our little weather station is now working flawlessly. Now that I stated that watch it bomb. But seriously the last problem we had with it not porting it's info to the internet servers has been nonexistent since the DNS entries were adjusted.

I trust everyone has enjoyed the Tree City Activities earlier this month. It was perfect weather to plant trees in. This is the 15th year we are a Tree City. If you wish to contribute to the city"s participation of tree city, check out the city's tree city page.

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Tues. 1-25-05 - Our little weather station is now porting all of it's data to the weather people in Hanford; and to all those interested, in a data format on what Hams call APRS. APRS is short for Automatic Position and Reporting System. This is a radio system that armature radio operators use to track (people/vehicles/most anything), send short messages, and weather reports to all monitoring (mostly other hams). Normally you will see the weather updated about every 5 min's or so, unless we are working on the computer or weather station. The same data that scrolls across the top is also on the linked to the easier to read weather page.

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Thurs. 1-20-05 - A lot of moisture in the air now. Rainfall totals for this season so far is near 6.75". I just finished upgrading the hardware on the weather station. Now come the fun software part. You will notice we have improved wind reading (taking a 10 min average) and added humidity/dew point and a barometer. Currently it is just a scroll up on top. The weather pages ARE coming.

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Sat. 12-25-04 - Christmas: A little moisture in the air. Looks like we will have a little fog tonight, with a threat of rain this week. So, enjoy these "nice" winter days. But, then our farmer DO need a little more rain (only a tad over three inches so far this year).

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Fri. 12-24-04 - Christmas Eve: Looks like Santa will be visiting us on a Frosty night. Merry Christmas to ALL.

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Fri. 12-24-04: Back to "typical" winter weather, with high fog and patches of low thick valley fog. I guess this and that frost are so "normal" that we do not rate these advisories not.

Did everyone get all their Christmas shopping done and presents wrapped? Too late to do it on the web. But we still have the old "Brick and Mortar" stores with some open until 8 pm tonight! What happened to spend a nice quiet night at home on Christmas Eve?

I am proud of myself this year for not waiting like usual until 1 or 2 Christmas Eve Day to fill my shopping list. My list was filled by Monday the 20th. Mom and Dad would be proud.

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Thurs. 12-23-04: Cold and frosty seem the order of the day, today. Where was that frost advisory last night? Okay those that braved the outdoors didn't need an advisory, but...

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Sat. 12-02-04: What a GREAT Christmas Parade!! Thanks Keith, John, Larry, and all the folks at the Chamber for putting on such a GREAT parade. These evening parades are getting better and better every evening. Some estimates had close to 4000 people downtown last night. AND, it was more than a little cold - it was out and out "freezing."

Hey guys we are experimenting with the different stickers from Weather Underground. It looks like the best one is STILL the ticker on the top of the page. But that the reason for the 2 seemingly different weather things below. One says it's Los Banos. But, has been doing the Merced airport instead. It includes notices of any advisories. We will be doing "real time" weather observations eventually.

Speaking of weather..... Looks like we might get a damp day (or at least warmer evenings) Sunday, with some real looking rain on Tuesday or so.

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Tues. 11-30-04: BURRR!!!! got below freezing last night. White frost on lots of grass too. For those with temperature sensitive plants, I hope you got your plants taken care of. I managed to shoot almost 2 feet of ice out of my garden hose this morning. "Where did I stash that burlap sack for the water facet?"

Did some work on the weather data going to Weather Underground. Did I ever tell you "I hate Daylight Savings Time?" Well, I got one more reason the dislike this nifty daylight phony time. Hey, back in the 70's... Just before the those gas crisis, didn't we have no Daylight Savings Time for a year or two? Or was that some daydream I have? I know it was all the eggs I packed for you to buy at the stores back then.

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Sun. 11-28-04: YIKES!!! That wind chill is colder than those "frosty nights" we had last week. Where did I pack that wood burning stove last summer?

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Sat. 11-27-04 - pm: This is the first time in a LONG time that I have not seen the TV filled up with Christmas stuff before Thanksgiving. Now for the stores.... Well that's another (sore) subject. But for some strange reason I am ready for Christmas this Turkey Day Weekend. I am enjoying some GREAT old fashion Christmas Carols on RFDTV as I enter this.

On the way home earlier this blistery afternoon, it was nice to see the American flag flying from the top of the Miller/Lux Building. Thanks Joe for adding to our downtown "skyline.".

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Sat. 11-27-04: Welcome back winter weather. It's nice to hear those wind chimes ringing in the breeze.

I hope everyone enjoyed "Black Friday."BTW - Black Friday got it's nick name from being the day that all retailers' books went from the red and into the black.

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Thurs. 11-25-04: What a lovely sunny Thanksgiving. I hope all had an enjoyable "Turkey Day." Now it's time to work off all the food with our all-day shopping-a-thon on Friday. Some stores here in Los Banos are opening at 5:30am? Too early for me.

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Tues. 11-23-04: Looks like we will have a sunny Thanksgiving. It's such nice weather to travel to Grandma's House. And, this year the kids can go outside and play while the turkey is roasting in the oven or cooking in the fryer.

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Mon. 11-22-04: Hey they had frost on the ol' pumpkin last night. Looks like it's going to repeat tonight.

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Sun. 11-21-04: Well this weekend brought us the loss of our tree leaves. FINALLY it is beginning to look like Fall. This was the first time the temperature dipped cold enough for us to see the some of the leaves change to their deep colors. And that blasted wind added to the chill not only to make us put on our heavy coats and jackets, but to knock off those colorful leaves along with some of the old brown ones.

Time now for us to help Joe and the Public Services guys in their leave gathering process. Don't forget to wind-row your leaves about 6 to 10 inches from the gutter of the street. Best to wait till the wind subsides, as you'll be fighting a losing battle with Mother Nature.

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