Males and females split, and "Chestnut" fry pond is filling!

All the males are now in their own tank, separated from the females. I split the mature filter media from the oval tank and added to it so that each tank is well catered for on the biological filtration.

Less fish in the oval tank now, and these are some of the females I hope to spawn from later this month

Next up - making the first fry pond operational. My approach with the ponds is to keep it simple this year and to line them with 1 year silage liner. The digging work exposed a stony subsoil and worryingly laced with flints, which may puncture the liner so I set the kids a task to collect as many of them as they could find with the winner collecting the most. Thanks Frankie for the idea! It worked a treat.

My children helping out by collecting sharp stones and flints to help mitigate the risk of tears to the liner.

We're getting ready to line the pond

Liner unrolled and held in place on the west side with bricks

We worked quickly to spread the liner, weighting the edges to stop the wind blowing it out of position and over the rough ground

Almost done!

Starting to fill the pond was quite a moment. The project has taken a lot of hard work, and this felt like a big step towards the business end of my project.

The pond has a flat base, 2ft deep at the far end and 1 ft deep at the near end.