Pond life.

Originally Posted by phil24_7

RE: Pond Life.

Oh... I thought you meant this



As for that kind. Fill it with saline water, catch a few weeny cod (an afternoons work), then feed them the scraps until they're 20lb jobbies You wouldn't be the first

Originally Posted by Berlin

No one , that I've read has mentioned blanket weed.

The Blanket Weed is a good point . I didn`t want to mention anything like that yet as it is "One thing at a time" to deal with and Spring is not too far away in relation to Pond timing . The Algae will have a chance to get established if Phil`s Pond is out of balance so what I was trying to teach him was the basics of Water condition . As Berlin has mentioned , your Pond is already established and looks good . It`s a good time of the year to take over the reigns of Pond ownership with regards to Major problems coming along . Look after the Water and the Pond and in turn that will look after your Fish .

Keith_d , your point about the Sand filter is a very good one . The sludge at the bottom of the Pond can house all sorts of nasties and by running it through the type of filter you mention it can be a very good and natural way of removing them . A lot of villages in poor countries filter their water that way , they have it run through a series of buckets that start off with rocks , then into pebbles , into sand then fine sand and what comes out the other side is clean looking water with hardly any solids in them . Combined with a UV filter the water becomes drinkable compared to the Bacteria infested soup they were drinking beforehand .

Right, I did the water tests today, and these are my results:

Pond 1 (the smaller pond, that has a filter and uvc, a fair few plants)

pH 7.2
Nitrite 0 ppm
Nitrate 0 ppm
Ammonia 0 ppm

Pond 2 ( The large pond, with 20+ fish including some Koi, only a few plants and no filter/uvc for well over a week)

pH 6.6
Nitrite 0 ppm
Nitrate 0 ppm
Ammonia 0 ppm

Happily surprised that all the levels are 0ppm, especially seeing as the large pond has had no filtration/UVC/oxygenation for a while.

What pH should the pond be at? I read somewhere that goldfish like 7.5 and that different fish like different pH levels. What do Koi like? Is there a happy medium that goldfish, Koi and other popular pond fish like (I'm still not precisely sure what fish I have in the pond)?

Regards
Phil