Do you have pictures of your floating islands?

This is a picture of the hard Styrofoam, spray painted. You can see the paint is wearing off. Next year, I'll try wrapping the foam in black fabric.

This is the spongy foam with two pots of annuals.

Hi
I used the styrofoam from my cremation urn lol Worked great at first but has become waterlogged . tends to tip over when the fish bump it .
hope the urn lasts longer as I intend to be dead for a very long time ?? lol gary

Gary,

LOL

Lol @ gary. I've found the styrofoam breaks down rapidly in the heat & humidity here. Ultimately, I removed it out of concern for my fishes. Any wisdom/experience to share here?

That said, my floating island has seen better days. Come Mon, I'll be robbing the spongy foam packing from the two new computers I just received at the office & replacing it. I must be slipping here...can't believe I missed that.

Hi
That has been my experience also. The urn packing seemed denser that the average styrofoam but has become waterlogged in spite of the paint.
Another method I've tried is the "Expanding foam" used as insulation. can make any size shape you want as well as imbed the window screen .Extremely bouyant and doesn't seem to absorb water as styrofoam. Have used it in aquaria for decoration BUT the bouyancy was a real problem. I just used acrylic paint but two part epoxy or marine paint would probably be longer lasting but far more expensive .
Due to a very aggresive water lily there is no room for islands but may try again come winter gary

The best floating island we made was out of bulk pond filter material. We used 1.5" filter material and cut a kidney bean shaped out of two pieces and sewed them together. Then we took expanding waterfall foam and squirted some into the bottom of the island and along the sides for buoyancy.

Since we had two layers of filter material we scooped out a pocket in the top layer to allow us to put some aquatic soil in the pocket and put seeds and seedlings. We rubbed aquatic soil into the filter material to embed soil into the whole thing as much as possible.

The pictures shows our two islands. The island on the left is in it's 4th year. It grows every year despite staying over winter in the pond. Every year it has new little plants and grasses!

On the right hand side of the pond is a little island right after we made it...didn't have any black filter material so it's white...kind of looks like a sandy beach to us! LOL!

The white island is bare in the picture but by the end of last summer it was totally covered with plants. We had to inject a bit extra foam during the season because the plants were getting so heavy.

This is the best way we've found for islands and they last. We can't wait to have a bigger pond so we can make an island 2 or 3 feet wide but in our small pond these two small islands are lovely!

The fish are always hiding uner them and really like them as a place to rest.

We also have birds landing on the islands to drink from the pond.

Best project ever! :)

Here is a link that might be useful: The instructions for building the floating island

I have a styro packing island, too. I piled a bunch of water hyacinth on it to hide the white styro, and put a potted taro in the center hole. They all dangle their roots in the water and seem quite happy.