For the bigger jobs you are going to want a professional to take care of the problems for you. But every pond can be looked after in the meantime with a few basic insights into how a pond works. The following is a guide to how you can make the most of your pond and ensure your fishes are healty.
New Ponds: For anyone who has just started a pond from scratch without any biology or plants yet established it’s going to be essential to leave the pond to acquire a level of algae and bacteria from the surrounding atmosphere. All ponds work off the nitrogen cycle, which is an exchange of chemicals from fish waste into bacteria culture back into harmless nitrate which will get cycled off by the plant life and atmosphere when it rains. When you first put tap water into the pond there is nothing but base metals and chlorine in the water. The base metals are essential to maintaining the ph of the water, but the chlorine will take several days to react and evapourate from the water. If we have visited your pond at anytime and replaced the water we do this for you along with make sure there is some biology left in the pond to keep it stablised. If you are by yourself first add some dechlorinator based off the size of your pond before placing any fish in it. Then make sure the pond is left for at least a week minimum to grow some algae around the edges. This will indicate the water is starting to establish it’s own biology. You can add various bacteria cultures available from a local garden centre if you want to speed the process up even more. (For larger ponds and for new ponds we will include this as part of the quote). If your pond has no filter system you will need to leave it for a several weeks longer to make sure the water quality is capable of managing any waste produced by your fish and dead plants. Buying fish for your pond: Some people are keen to buy a particular type of fish or the latest japanese breed in a bid to garner some kudos with fellow collectors. Whatever you want to choose if you are not looking to breed and just want a pond with a healthy stock you should be buying whatever you think looks good in your pond as opposed to worrying about type of fish. There are various alternatives to Koi that are much hardier and easier to look after, so here are the most common. Shubunkins/ Goldfish: Shubunkins are essentially a spotted breed of goldfish, they endure bad water quality much better and suffer from far less diseases due to the lack inbreeding. They are also my personal favourite type of fish. Ghost/ Butterfly Koi: These are koi that have been breed to look golden and shiny in colour with the butterfly varieties also having extremely long fanned dorsa and tail fins. They look amazing, but the butterfly’s tend to be very delicate so be prepared to make sure the pond is kitted out for them until they get much bigger. Ghost koi tend to be slightly hardier than regular koi but not much in the way so as to make a difference. Orfe / Tench: These are pretty much as close to as hardy a fish as you can buy. There is very little inbredding an the varieties available can give some striking colours to your pond without the need for much investment. Very low maintenence but some people prefer not to have them due to their fat shape when in adulthood when compared to koi . Frogs: Not so much a choice as more of a presence to your pond. You really shouldn’t worry about these guys invading your pond unless you are using it to breed fish in. They will not attack your fish except they dominate them in size so unless you have a sudden invasion of cane toads from australia you should be fine. The majority of frogs and toads tend to just sit around scoffing the invading wildlife that your fish live off so really they are only sharing the food source with your fish, and the fish will live happily off the algae. Day to day care: Most fish food manufactures will tell you, you need to feed your fish up to three times a day. This is outright nonsense and really is done to sell fish food. If you are breeding koi you will already know what you are doing and not be needing my advice. For everyday fish, feeding has one role alone and that is simply to get your fish tame enough to not fear you when you approach the pond. If you are feeding them regularly you will be giving them above and beyond what they need to survive and essentially most fish food is just the fish equvalent of protein shakes. If you feed them at a set time in a set manner they will get used to the idea that you are associated with feeding and thus not consider your a threat. So long as you are not leaving excess food in the pond to rot there will be no issues as the fish will eat as much as they can and that’s pretty much it. Do ensure however you have some form of filter if you are doing this as the excess waste will start to pile up in your pond causing a problem in the long run. Smaller fish may get swim bladder problems if you feed them too much, causing them to sit at the surface struggling. If this happen switch to a smaller sized pellet of food and withhold any food for the next couple of days to let the trapped food get digested safely. This isn’t usually a problem for the fish but you will want to make sure the pond is netted so the local cat doesn’t fish him out for food. Most times you won’t need to do anything with your fish at all. If you notice any unusual behaviour such as extreme anti-social behaviour or constant gasping at the service, this could be a problem with low O2 levels or high Amonia levels. The former can be solved quickly enough by ensuring there is a disturbance of the water from a waterfall or air pump. Amonia comes down to ensuring there is some form of plant life to manage the water pollution. If you have a developed filter this may not be required or at the very least minimal amounts of plant life to manage it. It is usually best to test the water levels first to ensure it is high levels of ammonia. General slugishness in cold weather or the odd activity at the surface is not a problem and is merely natural activity. It is usually far more apparent in hot weather where O2 levels drop quickly due to heat. Chemical treatments for ponds: In most cases excess growth of some unwanted parasite or algae is indicative more of what type of pond you have than really what type of chemical treatment you need. In most cases the best solution is to solve the water quality problem and go from there. Various types of treatment exist for things like ‘ich’ or duckweed, which will work quite well but you’ll want to consider why the pond has these things to begin with. Parasites are best dealt with via a good quality UV lamp along with possibly a surface skimmer to deal with things like duckweed. Both these are one off installations that for the most part are quite affordable and will remove the risk altogether for the ongoing issues. Algae in general can overgrow in various circumstances, usually due to an ammonia spike from excess fish numbers, or a particularly sunny summer month. In these cases either a powdered algae killer can be used to breakdown the algae for the filter or increasing the size of the filter system if you don’t want to sell some of your smaller fish to a nieghbour or on gumtree.com. Algae powders only work with a filter because simply cause it to die back and sit in your pond until it rots. If your pond is then full of dead algae it will simply feed the next generation and cause it to grow back along with all the dead algae sitting in your pond water keeping it a pea green colour. Medical issues like ‘ich’ or worse should be looked at by a proffesional, and their advice taken, as sometimes the fish might be a danger to the others or in need of specific treatment.
Seasonal Care: Different seasons bring different behaviour from fish. In wintertime they will not need feeding as they will be mostly inactive and docile. If the water temperature drops below or close to freezing you should turn off your filter and UV lamp until the springtime to avoid damage to your pump and also to prevent leaks developing within the piping from thaw/freeze damage caused by the UV lamp heating the water. In the summer, when the fish are more active, they will produce more waste so the best times to have the pond cleaned will be the end of spring/early summer and around the end of summer/early autumn. This is mainly because of the activity of the fish. The spring will need to have the filter prepped for the rapid build of waste in the heat, with the autumn preparing the filter for the winter time so it does not clog up. Feeding should take place between spring and mid-autumn depending on how hot the year remains. Once you have to start turning the central heating on for your house it’s about the right time to cut back on the fish feeding. The fish have a type of antifreeze that they produce to manage the winter months without dying. This trade off means they have to stay less active to conserve energy. But your pond is like macdonalds, they will eat until they get fat or ill and not know any better. So you need to treat them like kids essentially, withholding their food for their own good. In the long run this means over winter they will lose some weight but they will not get ill or die.