I have had to give up on certain plants, as someone would eat them (common snails in my case) and would dessimate some plant types and not others. So water starwort does well and bog bean, but the water lavender starts up every spring and gets eaten by early summer. Also, if your pond is new, the caddis fly larvae will have relatively little choice of what it can eat. So up to a point, the more plants, more choice, and more plants are likely to thrive, but not always the plants you had your heart set on. Caddis flys are fascinating though, their houses are so intricate and unique.

I think wildlife ponds are full of surprises and takes time to mature and get a balance. So plenty of algae and bugs means more food for amphibians, dragonflys, and birds. Just have to wait for them to come.

Do a Google search for "Hubert Duprat" and you will see the most beautiful Caddisfly sculptures that he creates using tiny pearls,jewels, etc. I first came across this site when I had what turned out to be a Caddisfly larva wandering round the shallows of my brand new pond. I hadn't a clue what it was, in fact I thought it was something stuck inside an empty bit of twig till someone on this wonderful site told me otherwise. I had even contemplated helping it out of its 'prison'...just as well I didn't!!
Big Kid

There appears to be a problem with the Bromfield site for Macs. I'm on a friend's Mac today and it's not displaying the various buttons that are to the left of 'search' They do actually work, but don't display correctly, so anyone on Mac will have to try each one till they get the right section. It's worse on `Firefox' than on 'Safari' but we don't have 'Internet Explorer'

Big Kid

Apply daily for a few days and they will start start to disappear.

http://www.puddleplants.co.uk