Then I went to Petco and bought three goldfish for 55 cents. I carried them out with no food or supplies. That presented a dilemma.
I went and got small stones and gravel from the back yard and washed it, then I filled the bowl with enough to create an undergravel filter that lets bacteria collect at the bottom. This is important.
To start the bacteria growth process I floated my fish, still in their bag, in these rocks and a gallon of distilled water. After 20 minutes, when the water temperatures matched, I let them go and released all the tank water in the bag with them, that already carries established bacteria. That water constituted the other third of the water in the bowl. So if one third of the water is already with bacteria, that is a good mix.
The water is cloudy at first until all the dust settles. I then went and googled Pond Plants and Planted Aquariums, and you can see so many natural plants that one can obtain from streams, rivers, lakes, aquaducts. People collect them to breed more plants, or to sell at pet stores for $5-7.00 each, but I just collecte my own and put them into my mini pond.
There are hundreds of plants you can find that work in these bowl ponds, but I collected my own pictures below.
These plants all have names like echinodorus-cordifolius-tropica-marble-queen.
So it is better to just look for the plants, rather than try to remember the names...
