fish pond ecosystem

1. Khushbu
Ph. D. Research Scholar
Khushbu181997@gmail.com
CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar

2. Ecology
• Ecology is derived from two words 'oikos' and 'logos'
• Ecology= Oikos+logos
 oikos means house or dwelling place.
 logos means study of
Hence, Ecology can be defined as the study of living organisms
with respect to their house or dwelling place.

3. Ecosytem
• An ecosystem is a dynamic complex of plant, animal, and
microorganism communities and the nonliving environment,
interacting as a functional unit.
• Remember that the organisms living in an ecosystem are
broken down into categories: producers, consumers, and
decomposers.

4. Structure of the Ecosystem
• The structure of an ecosystem is characterised by the
organisation of both biotic and abiotic components. This
includes the distribution of energy in our environment. It also
includes the climatic conditions prevailing in that particular
environment.
• The structure of an ecosystem can be split into two main
components, namely:
• Biotic Components
• Abiotic Components
• The biotic and abiotic components are interrelated in an
ecosystem. It is an open system where the energy and
components can flow throughout the boundaries.

6. Types of Ecosystem
An ecosystem can be as small as an oasis in a
desert, or as big as an ocean, spanning
thousands of miles. There are two types of
ecosystem:
• Terrestrial Ecosystem
• Aquatic Ecosystem

7. Aquatic Ecosystem
• Aquatic ecosystems are ecosystems present in a body of water.
These can be further divided into two types, namely:
• Freshwater Ecosystem
• Marine Ecosystem
Freshwater Ecosystem
The freshwater ecosystem is an aquatic ecosystem that includes
lakes, ponds, rivers, streams, and wetlands. These have no salt
content in contrast with the marine ecosystem.
Marine Ecosystem
The marine ecosystem includes seas and oceans. These have a
larger salt content and greater biodiversity in comparison to the
freshwater ecosystem.

8. Fresh Water Ecosystem
• Freshwater ecosystems cover 0.78% of the Earth's surface and
inhabit 0.009% of its total water. They generate nearly 3% of
its net primary production. Freshwater ecosystems contain
41% of the world's known fish species.
There are three basic types of freshwater ecosystems:
• Lentic: slow moving water, including pools, ponds, and lakes.
• Lotic: faster moving water, for example streams and rivers.
• Wetlands: areas where the soil is saturated or inundated for at
least part of the time.

9. Fresh Water Ecosystem

10. Pond ecology
• Pond ecology is best described as the interaction of
the life in your pond with the environment that exists
there. A shallow, nutrient rich pond, exposed to
sunlight with little water flowing through it will be
teeming with algae and aquatic plants. It may have
very little animal life present because of low oxygen
levels.
• In contrast a newly created, deep, spring fed pond
may have little life of any kind in it because of low
temperatures and lack of food supply.

11. Pond Ecosystem

12. Pond
• A pond is a quiet body of water that is too
small for wave action and too shallow for
major temperature differences from top to
bottom. It usually has a muddy or silty bottom
with aquatic plants around the edges and
throughout.
• Generally, in a pond, the temperature
changes with the air temperature and is
relatively uniform.

13. Pond environment
• Most garden ponds, and many countryside ponds too, are
essentially closed ecosystems.
• They do recieve inputs of material from outside such as leaves
and rainfall, and they do export adults of creatures which have
larval stages in them, but generally what goes into a pond stays
there, be it nutrients or debris, unless someone fishes it out.
• This makes them more sensitive to pollutants such as excess
nutrients than do most other garden habitats.

14. Physical factors
• Water quality: Clean water is an essential component of a
healthy wildlife pond. The best water to fill a pond is
rainwater. Avoid diverting water from a ditch or stream,
because at some times of year they may well be contaminated
with pollutants, fertiliser or silt - and you would need a license
to extract water.
• Tap water and run-off often contain nutrients in which make
your pond more susceptible to algal blooms. Tap water also
contains chlorine, although it naturally degrade over a few
days. If at all possible, prevent the run-off of water into the
pond that has passed through fertilised soil.

15. Oxygen and Temperature
• These can be considered together, because the warmer water
becomes, the less oxygen it can hold, and so the more stress
animals can experience. At 5°C water holds 9.1 ml oxygen per
litre, by 30°C it has fallen to 5.9ml/l. In hot weather you can
often see carp gasping an air and water mix at the pond
surface, and if the water gets too hot, fish can be killed by
oxygen lack.
• However, most invertebrate animals living in lentic (pond)
conditions are adapted to low and fluctuating oxygen levels, so
this isn't quite the problem some people assume.
• Temperature of course depends on sunlight, so shaded ponds
heat less than sunlight ponds, while shallow ponds heat up
faster than deeper ones. An ideal wildlife pond could have
shaded and sunlight areas, and a variety of (shallowish)
depths, so creatures can move to the conditions that suit them.

16. Pond Habitat
• There are different parts of the pond with different creatures
using them
• Surface film habitat. Water has very high surface tension,
making it possible for small creature like pond skaters to walk
on the surface film where they feed on plants and debris.
Gnat and mosquito larvae use the film to support them while
they breathe air through snorkels on their bottoms.
Pond skater

17. Gnat
Mosquito

18. Pond Habitat
Marginal Habitat
Vegetative Habiat
Bottom Habiat
Open water Habiat

19. Open Water Habitat
• This is most of the volume of the pond, between the surface
layer, and the beginning of vegetation growth on the bottom
and sides.
• Its most important inhabitants are the plankton,
phytoplankton plants and zooplankton animals, including
larval stages of animals which live elsewhere as adults.
• The open water is used by hunting fish, and in consequence is
a dangerous place for small invertebrates, which largely avoid
it in favour of the much safer and productive vegetation
habitat.

20. Bottom Habitat
• Pond bottoms range from un-covered liner with little except
algal growth, through often rather inhospitable deep silt or
peaty material, to sand and pebbles in which bottom living
(submerged and emergent) plants can root.
• Many small detritivores (which eat debris) live within the
bottom substrate, and where appropriate, larger animals such
as swan mussels and crayfish, but neither do well in garden
ponds, being more often found in lotic rather than lentic water
bodies.

21. Vegetation Habitat
• Vegetation habitat is the term we are using to describe the
space among the roots, stems and leaves of plants living
completely within the water, or rooted in there and growing
out to flower.
• Since most plants thrive in shallow water, it's the edge of the
pond - indeed the top 5cm or so, that carries most of the life,
but many creatures also use the habitat created by bottom-
rooted plants.

22. Marginal habitat
• This is another very biologically rich area. It is where the
pond meets the surrounding terrestrial habitat, and as pond
levels go up and down, the area will be more or less flooded
accordingly, and in that way is rather like the beach of a
seashore.
• The marginal habitat grades downwards into well vegetated
bottom and weed habitat with aquatic plants, and upwards into
primarily land plants which like to get their feet wet. You can
create large marginal pond zones by creating a bog garden.
•

23. Energy source in Pond Ecosystem
• Ponds get their energy from the sun. As with other ecosystems,
plants are the primary producers.
• The chlorophyll in aquatic plants captures energy from the sun
to convert carbon dioxide and water to organic compounds and
oxygen through the process of photosynthesis.

24. Key Nutrients of Ponds
• As with terrestrial plants, pond plants need C02 and soluble
ions of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous to grow, plus
the usual variety of minor and trace elements. In ponds,
carbon dioxide is never limiting as it is very soluble in water.
• The key limiting nutrient in freshwater systems is generally
phosphorous as phosphates, and its level is used to determine
if a water body is of low productivity (oligotrophic) with
levels of phosphate around 5-10μg/l, mesotrophic with levels
at 10-30μg/l or very productive with phosphate levels of 30-
100μg/l. Ponds and lakes polluted by nutrient run-off can go
up to much higher levels.
• However, too many nutrients can cause algal blooms, leading
to eutrophication

25. Food Chain in Pond Ecosystem
• The transfer of food energy from the source in plants through
a series of organisms with repeated eating and being eaten is
referred to as food chain.
• Food chain was first introduced by African-Arab scientist and
philosopher Al-Jahid in 9th century and latter popularised in a
book published in 1927 by Charles Elton, which also
introduced the food web concept.
• At each transfer a large proportion 80 to 90 percent of the
potential energy is lost as heat.
• Therefore number of steps or “links” in a sequence is limited,
usually to four or five.
• The shorter the food chain , the greater the available energy.

26. Trophic level
• A trophic level refers to the organism’s position in
the food chain.
• In complex natural communities, organisms whose
food is obtained from plants by the same number of
steps are belong to the same trophic level.
a) Green plants (producers or autotrophs), which
means “self nourishing”- I trophic level
b) Herbivores (primary consumers)- II trophic level
c) Carnivores (secondary consumers)- III trophic level
d)Top Carnivores (tertiary consumers)- IV trophic
level

27. What is in a food chain
• Producer
• Consumer
• Decomposers

28. Producers
• Producer are the autotrophic organisms that utilize sunlight as
their energy source and use simple inorganic material to
produce their own food.
• In lakes and ponds, the producers are rooted or large floating
plants and phytoplankton's.Primary producers Unlike land
habitats, ponds have two sets of primary producers, the large
plants like those on land, and the phytoplankton, minute single
celled or multicellular algae which swim or are suspended in
the water.
• They are very important ecosystem drivers, since they are the
base of the food chain for filter-feeding herbivores such as tiny
crustaceans which in turn are the food for many carnivorous
animals and higher plants.

29. Example
• Phytoplankton, literally “wandering plants,” are microscopic
algae that float in the open water and give it a green
appearance. They carry out photosynthesis using carbon
dioxide that is dissolved in the water and release oxygen that is
used by the bacteria and animals in the pond.
• Phytoplankton are not actually plants-they are protists!

30. Phytoplanktons
Diatoms
Cyanobacteria

31. •
• Periphytic algae are microscopic algae that attach themselves
to substrates and give the rocks and sticks a greenish brown
slimy appearance. They also carry out photosynthesis and
produce oxygen, often near the bottom of the pond where it can
be used by decomposers.
• Submerged plants grow completely under water
• Floating plants include plants that float on the surface and
plants that are rooted on the bottom of the pond but have leaves
and/or stems that float.
• Emergent plants are rooted in shallow water but their stems
and leaves are above water most of the time.
• Shore plants grow in wet soil at the edge of the pond.

33. Consumers
• The primary consumers in a pond's food web consist of tiny
herbivorous animals that feed on algae and other aquatic plants
to sustain themselves.
• These animals include insects, tadpoles, very small fish and
snails. They also include a variety of nearly microscopic
animals collectively known as zooplankton.

34. • The secondary consumers ( Carnivores) feed on primary
consumers.
• There are some organisms that eat other carnivores like a eat
all types of fishes including carnivores called tertiary
consumers.
• Top carnivores: Animals which are not killed or rarely killed
and eaten by other animals.
• Another type of consumers are detritivores

35. Example of Consumers
• Zooplankton are microscopic animals that eat phytoplankton
or smaller zooplankton. Some are single-celled animals, tiny
crustaceans, or tiny immature stages of larger animals.
• Zooplankton float about in the open water portions of the
pond and are important food for some animals.
• Invertebrates include all animals without backbones.
Macroinvertebrates are big enough to be seen with the naked
eye. Some of them are only found in clean water.
• Vertebrates are animals with backbones. In a pond these
might include fish, frogs salamanders, and turtles.

36. Zooplanktons

37. Decomposers
• Microorganisms that are able to breakdown large
molecules into small parts.
• Decomposers return the nutrients that are in a living
thing to the soil.

38. Decomposition

39. Food Chain Freshwater Ecosystem
• Level Type Example
Producer Phytoplankton Algae, diatoms
Primary consumer Zooplanktons Copepods
Secondary consumer Fish Minnows
Tertiary consumer Large carnivore Kingfisher

41. Complex food chains consist of many links. For eg. In the ocean
Phytoplanktons
Zooplankton
multicellular carnivores zooplankton
Worms and Crustaceans
Small fish
Large fish
Birds and mammals
decomposition by microbes

42. SYMBOL OF TRUST