For urban inhabitants, yard space is at a premium. With apartment houses planted right on the streets and a minimal amount of communal land in the back, there’s no way to maintain a garden or cultivate a lot of flowers. You can, however, think on a much smaller scale. If you have access to a balcony or a deck, or even a fire escape, you can build a water garden in containers that will give you the aura of an in-ground water feature. You’ll be able to enjoy sounds of the water gurgling and watch tiny fish swimming, grow water plants, and enjoy the serenity nothing but a water garden can offer. Water garden containers give you the basis for building a watery environment in very little space.
Coming up with water garden containers isn’t as difficult as selecting exactly what you’d like. A recommended volume for a container is 15-25 gallons, and any kind of container in that size range will work. You will also need containers to produce your water plants in, because plants have to be grown in separate pots and then transplanted into the water-filled container. It’s preferable to select a container with a dark-colored interior, because the dark color will give your pond the look of depth. Dark interiors are also more environmentally-friendly in that they won’t provide an attraction for algae and yet they’ll camouflage the presence of any algae that starts growing.
Your water garden optimumly will be located in a location where it will get at minimum six hours of sun each day. The majority of water plants don’t grow and flower well without at least that much sunshine, but some bog plants will be okay with less sun. The plants you pick for your garden need to be varied for the best effect. Choose some with floating properties, a few submerged, and emergent species when selecting the plants you want to incorporate into your garden. Plants offer the function of shading the water which, once again, diminishes the growth of algae. When you build a new water garden, however, you can expect your water to get murky after a couple of weeks. Just hang in there, though, and the plants and fish will eventually start controlling the algae population, and the water will clear up.
In addition to fish, you need to put a few snails in your water garden containers. Snails are critical in eating algae, fish waste matter, and decaying organic materials. Tiny fish, such as guppies, are recommended for containers that are 20 gallons or smaller; larger than that you can try a couple of goldfish. Guppies and fish like that are excellent choices, because they resist changes in temperature well, and they gobble up those pesky mosquitoes.

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