Advice required with garden fish pond.

[Turbo cab]

The initial message was deleted from this topic on 15 May 2010 at 14:37

[Sheets Tabuer]

I don't have one now but I used to empty mine, put the fish in a paddling pool and get in there with a brush (wearing socks mind as to not pierce the liner) and give it a good scrub.

The fish will eat when hungry, if they haven't eaten the food in 30 minutes I would fish it out again.

ETA I used to have a neighbour who would come around once a week to tell me to fill my pond in as she had a small child and she thought it dangerous (same woman who knocked my wall down... old thread) I used to tell her it was in my garden and she'd say yes but my child could get in so I should fill it in.

Edited by Sheets Tabuer on Sunday 18th April 01:17

[Roadru77er]

Having kept fish for several years pond and tank ,and also worked in a large pet store it was my buisness to answer questions like this ,at this time of year fish are coming out of semi hybernation so will be a bit sluggish and will also be in breeding mode ,and wont eat till the water warms up , has the filter got a uv light as this needs changing roughly every 12months as it loses its effectiveness to kill algae ,use a net to do a sweep of the pond bottom to remove any debris that has collected there , it is not nessesary to drain the pond or to remove the fish as this can be very detrimental to the fishes health ,if you must then just drain half .Be careful cleaning pumps and filters as these are part of a highly balanced enviroment do one or the other . Chris

[sparkythecat]

Take the temperature of the water. When the water is cold the fish metabolism slows down and they tend not to eat much. If the water is much below 10degrees centigrade, don't feed them at all. As the teperature rises, feed only high fibre, low protein food.
Once the temperature is consistently above to 10degrees, the fish will be much more active, and you can feed normal pondsticks which are high protein. Don' use last years leftover pellets, but buy fresh.

[spikeyhead]

Assuming that the filter is in a separate filterbox and not an undergravel system, jsut take out one layer of sponge and knock the crap off it.

buy a pond thermoometer, it'll jsut float on the pond and tell you whether it's warm enough to feed.

four foot by three is a very very small pond to keep koi in, you'll struggle to keep more than a total of 24 inches of fish in there unless it's heavily over filtered.

Agree about the UV light, fit a new bulb.

[timbobalob]

Koi actually prefer 'pea green' colour water - it's full of nutrients and what the Japanese use to raise the fish quickly and healthily. I completely understand that you wouldn't want this though (as you actually want to see them!) With a decent filtration system (inc. UV light) the water should be crystal clear within a couple of weeks, as long as it's left running 24/7. The majority of pond filters are biological and need to have water going through them to keep all of the bacteria alive which go a long way to keeping the water clean - only the pre filter (usually coarse sponge) should be washed through with a hose as this catches all of the cack first.

Make sure the pump is turning the water round relatively quickly as well, with no dead spots in the circulation (like funny shapes or big clusters of plants) as this can cause stagnant areas which build up with algae.

To get it to a standard now, I'd remove the bulk of the blanket weed if you have any by hand and run the filter system from now on, leaving it to sort itself out. I've never personally been a fan of draining the pond and cleaning it as it disturbs the eco-system and you shouldn't really have to if the pump/filter system are doing their job right.

Hope this helps!

Tim