Well still no fish, at least none that you can see easily. There are guppies and some other bug larvae eating fish called a Pleco. The guppies are pretty with colorful tails but they don't show off much and it's a big pond. It will be a while before we can introduce larger fish. The next species will probably be a bunch (gaggle, school?) of gold fish as they also eat mosquito larvae and we are proud of the fact that there are practically no mosquitoes this high in the rainforest so we plan to keep any lost mosquitoes from breeding in our pond. Not just lost. The mosquitoes that make it up here have to go through a gauntlet of coquis, geckos, anoles, and the voracious bats which madly dart about the sky every evening eating everything.
I finished the wiring for the pond lights and tried them out with the bulbs they came with. Far too bright (as you can see in the photo). We want a subtle light that makes you want to walk out by the pond and enjoy the sound of the waterfall and not risk a migraine. We replaced those bulbs with some energy efficient tear-drop shaped bulbs that look pretty good. I had to do a lot of work on the wiring because the conduit I put in is below the liner where it's raised up on the side there but the outlets were just at the waterline which I realized was not such a good idea. I put in waterproof covers (adding an extra coating of magic silicone/acrylic stuff and covering in waterproof clay before putting the liner back in place. This involved shifting a lot of dense heavy boulders and I had to fish in new wire in conduit and outlets that are now high enough to not risk electrocuting an inquisitive fish.
Laurie and Laurie are starting to plant around the pond. They put in my favorite, a sealing wax palm which you can see there to the right of the bio-filter tank. I wanted to plant the palm in the pond in a large pot because I read on the internet (see you're not the only one) that sealing wax palms are swamp creatures and thrive in bogs. But I talked to a local pond expert and he told me that the container would have to be only partly submerged and we would have to disguise the upper part of the container with plants that drape over. Since we are having enough trouble moving rocks around and later planting plants to disguise the black liner my wife (one of the Laurie's) vetoed that plan. But I don't mind as I got my sealing wax palm and I think it is beautiful. The palm was courtesy of Marina and Wally who own the nearby Villa Sevilla Vacation rentals. They also gave us some bromeliads and a couple of small palms equally as rare as the sealing wax palm which grow up to be dangerous thorn covered masterpieces. You can see that I'm testing the waterfall in this photo. There is still some work to make that look natural.
