Waterfall
Opening pictures
This is the main waterfall, it falls about 1 mtr, the center brown bit is a piece drift wood to stop excess splashing & noise, the moss around the base of the waterfall is naturally occurring . I was growing a few orchids & had a constant sprayer going. This moss just started to grow on the floor so I don't know what it is called, but has a beautiful & delicate growing structure also it has a good creeping type habit that covers very well but without being overly aggressive & taking over. Im hoping for it to cover right around behind the wood in another 12 - 18 months, there is actually 200mm between the wood & the rock face behind it.
The waterfall lands in a pond that is approximately 1 mtr in diameter & approximately 400mm deep.
Passing the cursor over the pictures will trigger the sound of the waterfall.
From Front August 99
The picture to the below is around the 12 month stage, the moss gets no feeding other than what might be washed into the water as runoff when watering takes place. Also the fish waste in the main pond, although 2 X 100mm gold fish wouldn't produce that much waste & the water lilies use anything that may build up on the pond floor.
From side
Alternate pictures
By passing the cursor over the 2 pictures you will be shown two different ones .
These will take a few second to load.
Top picture shows the waterfall setup the day I turned the pump on, no plants just rock, the start of the fine tuning. Owing to the fact that I'm on tank water I had to cut down water loss to absolute minimum so I had to work out where I was losing any water, I reset the rocks behind the waterfall several times but couldn't stop a large amount of water loss. I finally built a large concave fibreglass backdrop that fitted behind the waterfall, I then set rocks into that this enables any splashing water to run over the rocks & moss and is then channelled back into the pond. After installing the backdrop the water loss dropped to negligible amounts about 20lts/week & that is more than likely just normal evaporation.
An automatic water system sprays a fine mist of water 3 times a day for 1 minute at a time , yes only 3 minutes a day watering to keep it in this green state some of that would also drain back into the river system.
Bottom picture shows the waterfall after the final rebuild, the fibreglass backdrop can clearly be seen behind the driftwood, the small pieces of moss can be seen on the rocks at the base of the driftwood.
Moss close-up leftside waterfall
Alternate
Base moss close-up
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Moss close-up rightside waterfall
Alternate
Base moss close-up