Seasonal Fish Pond Keeping Hints And Advice | Spring Time Has Arrived
Northern Hemisphere Spring Time Pond Keeping Tips
Spring is the time of year that life comes back to your garden fish pond, after a few months of inactivity during the colder winter months. Koi and gold fish are on the prowl looking for much needed food, after their semi hibernation during the cold bleak days of the past winter. Pond plants are starting to bloom and the dreaded green pond algae has come back to its old haunt.
Spring is the time of year in the water gardening calendar that many pond keepers start to experience pond hassles and problems. The warmer pond temperatures encourage bacterial fish disease problems such as ulcers; identified by sores appearing on sides of your fish which even develop into holes. Treatment can be a painstaking affair, costly and often leads to other hassles, due to the use of antibiotic fish treatment remedies.
A great product for controlling green pond water, blanketweed (string algae) and for reducing bacterial ulcer problems is Viresco Aqua or Viresco Koi ... This is a UK based company, but they ship to anywhere in the world at low cost ...
Now is the time to place the UVC sterilizer Or UVC clarifier back into the pond, from its storage place; there is very little biological activity in the cold Northern hemisphere winters. This often necessitates the UV light being removed from the fish pond, to prevent the quartz tube from being damaged should the pond freeze.
Green pond water, caused by planktonic algae will be easy to control once you kick start the UV light back into action. It would be a good idea to change the UV lamp, prior to placing the UV back into your garden fish pond. UV lamps typically last about 8000 hours; less than a year. Failure to replace the lamp will seriously affect the UV clarifiers ability to destroy green pond algae as it will not emit enough UV light.
The increase of green pond water is a direct result of increased natural sunlight, increased fish feeding and the resulting rise in the levels of nitrates and phosphates found in the fish pond. This is all part of a natural cycle taking place in your pond called the Nitrogen Cycle or Nitrification process ...
Spring Pond Care Tips And Advice
Spring is the time of year in which to give your garden fish pond a complete make over. If you decide to give your pond a good clean out then rescue as much aquatic pond life as you can. Leave any debris draining away next to the pond edge, overnight. This will allow any bugs and beasties to find their way back home. Once you have cleaned out the pond make sure that you treat any fresh municipal tap water, used to fill the pond with a chlorine and chloramine reducing product, such as Jungle Pond Ammonia Chloramine Remover ...
Aquatic water plants are starting to bloom and develop new growth. Now is the time to divide your hardy water lilies and other pond plants. You can also add an aquatic plant growth food into each new basket.
If you had previously installed pond lighting products last season, you can safely put them back into the fish pond.
Check the water quality. Many serious fish keepers will do a partial water change of up to one third in order to dilute any build up of salts and chemicals they may have been adding.
As the water temperature gets nearer to 10 Celsius (50 Fahrenheit) you can start feed the Koi and other pond fish with a quality pond fish food ... A few chopped worms or Daphne fish their normal food. A bit of live Daphne would not go amiss.
Some General Pond Keeping Tips ...
Lift the pond pump out of the pond water and clean the sponge. The sponge is used to trap particles and prevent these particles from blocking the internal workings. If you haven't already got a pond pump and are looking to buy one then choose a submersible pond pump that doesn't use a sponge is a better idea. TIP! Place the pump off the pond floor. This will prevent it from sucking up the debris and sludge off the pond bottom.
Your biological pond filter will start to feel the strain of the increased fish feeding and increased metabolic activity that takes place in warmer pond water. Ammonia levels will be higher and will need to be controlled by your pond bio filter.
TIP! If you currently use plastic coils or
other form of plastic pond filter media then why not add some
Fishmate Supra
Pond Filter Media to the filter chamber.
Supra biomedia is a low cost ceramic filter media
that is up to 100 times more efficient at storing large colonies of nitrifying
bacteria than plastic coils.
It is these nitrifying bacteria that break down toxic ammonia. Think about it this way! You would only need 1/100th the amount to do the same job. For the small to medium sized garden fish pond this biomedia is without a doubt the best in the world.
If you are happy to continue using your existing pond filter media, whether that be plastic rings, tubes, balls and so on you can improve the surface area, allowing more bacteria to colonize by simply doing the following: Use smaller diameter tubes or spheres. Break the tubes or spheres into small pieces using a hammer. Mix tubes with spheres and broken pieces of media. What you are aiming to achieve is a reduction of the free air space inside the pond filter box. You must make sure that there is a still a good flow of pond water through the biomedia.
If you have a garden and are contemplating using pesticides or chemical fertilizers then please be careful not to allow any run off get into your garden fish pond. Pesticides are not only poisonous to your Koi, goldfish and other aquatic life but are detrimental to the nitrifying bacteria, talked about in the previous paragraph. Certain pesticides will kill the bacteria, rendering your pond filter pretty much useless.
