Lol. Mary!
Ponds 2014 - Spring is here!
Damien says he is going to get the bio-well going today. So we will add the stuff today. Water is clear but bottom and sides are yuk.
Pond is up and running. Just one more pump (pressure filter and UV attached ) to fire up. I tried the barley stuff in the pond and it seems to be doing good stuff. I will give it another treatment then get out the vacuum. Damien gave it a rough cleaning over the weekend. No sign of fish but they will come.
If you build it, they will come!
I put my floating circles (about 24" across) in the pond and put a sheet of filter fiber on top to make a shade place for the fish. I had to attach a lead weight to keep them by the deep end where they hopefully will quit sluffing off and come out. There are some 2" babies and other smaller ones also out and about. Still can't figure out what the metallic light gray ones are. I have two in the tank in the house and one turned bright gold. The other never changed. The ones in the pond are hard to see because the bottom is dark but they look pretty dark. I run back at least 6 times a day to look and just before bed, in my bathrobe no less, I look one last time. goofy.
Not goofy! I go outside with the back lights and a flashlight to look!
I can hear the sound of the waterfalls through the closed porch door when I go to bed at night. I love that sound. It is so soothing.
I love the Pondzyme with Barley. Tried it for the first time this year. The algae was growing even when the pond was half covered in ice so I dosed it with some Algaway 5-4 and it worked. If I can keep it from getting ahead of me I should have a much nicer pond. The barley is really eating away at the stuff left on the bottom and rocks. I just applied the second dose. Water itself is crystal clear but that hasn't really been the problem. It has been the green stuff. D wants to start up the pressure filter and UV's this weekend so I am dosing while I can without worrying about turning off the UV so it won't kill the good bacteria. Only need them off for three days but still have to remember.
Just sitting here on my swing with one of the kitties and a beer. I love the sound of my waterfall.
Joyce - I love your pond and your kitty!
Thank you. I love them both!!
Lovely pond. Water falls are so soothing. Both of mine are noisy but I like them. Somebody suggested I add some small stones to make it a trickle sound. 1 I could but the other is up too high and falls from a form. Would be a change. Fish hide under them all the time so I guess they like all the splashing water.
Enjoy
Love the kitty! I have siamese kitties! (a lavender point and seal point) My sister is in Dublin, I always see a guy who lists fish from the Columbus area (is that you?) The waterfall is wonderful! My new waterfall will be at the back of the yard flowing toward our backdoor deck. The smaller one we have currently closer to the deck gets so loud we often times turn it off to talk! :)
That is loud!!
I'm about an hour from Columbus. I didn't advertise any fish and since I lost all but thirteen I might have to look him up!
Riley is a Ragdoll cat. He's a Blue Mitted with a blaze. I do have a Siamese though. He's a seal. He came from a black mama and an unknown daddy! (She's a slut).
Hey y'all, New Jersey here, after I killed off all my Koi last year I just put in 13 tadpoles and 13 trapdoor snails. Since i don't have any big fish any more, saw your pics Bonnie and am jealous, I expect the tads to grow up I think they have been eaten before they could mature in years past.
Does any one know how to get rid of the brown rock slime, guess ts some kind of algae, the water is clear but everything in the pond is covered with this stuff, its like jello only nasty....
Yuk. No clue. All I get is algae. Wonder if it would respond to the same stuff that kills algae.
Do you add pond bacteria of some sort? Occasionally I get jelly looking stuff in my filters after I add a heavy dose.
Never seen anything brown like a jelly but sure have had other mess in ponds.
Just did a water change, vacuum and put new bacteria in. Large pond is clear to bottom and hoping smaller one will clear soon. Uv's really help and have new ones on both now. Unfortunately company that made lamps for old ones were not available but that's ok cause the lamps from Tetra are cheaper.
Don't know who said ponds were cheap to keep but they are wrong. They are a delight to me though.
M. Mary hope you are progressing on your pond digging.
being its been so cold here its tough to find "cold water" bacteria, but I found some and have put two doses in and so far no improvement, but I'll keep pushing to get my "clear to the bottom" pond...............
Fish have erupted from sleep. Have seen several and they are large (for me at least). Still really spooky so I cannot approach the pond or they head for the cave. The water appears to be 52 according to my Pampered Chef thermometer. Can't find my regular pond thermometer. Not sure I can trust it. Will put it in the freezer to be sure it can go below 52.
So I guess I will put a little wheat germ food out there for them.
I have been thinking that I need to check the water temps to see if I should be feeding the fish. Seems like I am always coming and going! I did notice on the weather report that we were not supposed to have any more nights below the low 40's. I am hoping.
On Monday, DH and I lifted the waterlilies and fertilized them and moved them back to the other end of the pond. They always flowered nicely there before, but he wanted to give them a try on the other end of the pond last year - I am glad we have that chore finished - it was late in the year for us. I have seen in my journals where we have done it in March. Brrrr.... not this past March.
I really need to do that. Thanks for the reminder. I should be getting my TWL order of plants very soon. Should only have to hold them for a bit in the garage.
The fish are slowly getting used to me again. Not all bolting for the caves, well hardly. I put some food in the pond for them. Not sure they really see it as I fished out a bit from the skimmer and put it back in the pond. Will get a new pond thermometer to be sure of the temp. I am so thrilled as they are big and healthy. Hmmm. Maybe time to add the spring meds from AquaMeds. I am out of ProForm but have AquaPrazi.
I added AquaMeds to the pond for the first time. Also the Spring and Summer MicrobeLift PL. I have never had such a clean pond at this point. Oh, it needs vacuuming but that is minor. By now the algae would be everywhere. Starts before the ice has melted where the water spout we set up keeps the ice open somewhat and the sun hits the rocks on the west side of the pond. I treated with the barley stuff asap and it all died. So I have gotten a jump on it. Don't know if that takes care of the spring start up 'bloom' or not but I am tickled pink. Thanks to all who recommended the stuff. Carolyn for sure.
Mary - my husband is the one that discovered the Pondzyme, but I definitely swear by it.
Figured out why we had clarity problems last year - we never cleaned the quartz sleeves. We did do that this year - Right now, the water is crystal clear - I am hoping we can keep the clarity through the season.
We have one pump that is shot - it is one of the Pondmasters, and we figure it has to be all of 9 years old or so, so it really owes us nothing. I know he was looking at pumps online earlier - still have to check Webbs.
It is beautiful out side and I have been sitting by the pond dozing and watching the fish swim out to where I threw some food. Still skittish but at least they will come out for that.
It was beautiful earlier here - hubs and I had coffee on the back deck with the fish - my daughter is here this weekend, so we spent the day together. So much fun and so good to see her - I will see her again tomorrow - it is getting cool right now though.
Back into the 30's at night - I wish it would warm up and stay there. I noticed some of my daffs by the deck are starting to bud - going through some of my pictures, I see where they are normally flowering about the 3rd week in April......
Hmmm. Mine are up only a few inches. No buds. I have buds on my tulips though. I planted daffys in a whiskey barrel in the front yard and they all rotted. I think they were to far out of the ground. Well the barrel was and so the soil got too cold.
Turning my babies loose from the tank in the house back to their home in the pond. Soooo glad. Really tired of cleaning that tank.
Glad you are all doing so well with your ponds and fish.
Got woke up yesterday morning by racket from toads. At daylight went out and found 7 pairs mating around the perimeter of the large pond. Guess they will put a lot of tadpoles into pond.
Fish will have lunch. Just don't want any CTF like last year. So far only killed 1.
Found out why old pond is so brown. Somehow a pot got full of dirt and rocks and 4 little water lily leaves (finally) got dumped into it. Got to drag the vacuum out again. Then will put PondZyme in again.
Rained a nice steady rain here all day yesterday. Got 2" which we could use a lot more but at least we got some. N. Fl. got 23 inches and has some flooding so I'm not complaining at all.
So glad you have some live fish Oberon. Carolyn hope you stay warmed up in the pond and above.
Sad news.....So haven't been on for a few days because I lost all of my fish in 2 ponds.
Happy campers the day before, went out for the morning feed and every single one was dead. Most in the one pond were my better fish, I had moved them in there earlier in the month because they hadn't spawned yet, and I wanted the best of the best to breed together.
Anywhooo, long sad story short, we've been getting tons of rain here over the past few days. I talked to several koi experts, and because the water tests had all been perfect up to that point, all agreed it had to be a sudden ph crash from the overabundance of water. They said anytime you've already done the spring parasite treatment routine, have healthy fish, great water quality, and have a massive total fish kill, it's almost always an electrical current, poisoning, or ph. No current ( Iwas in the water scooping dead fish) no pesticide poisoning ( I have a fenced yard and the fish in the pool are fine) no disease (all spring preventatives had already been done) so it boils down to a weird ph crash.
I can honestly say I've NEVER ever ever worried about ph. In all of the years I've had fish, it has never been a problem, nor has heavy rain. But, we've also had a minimum of 6 inches in 72 hours.
However....and this is what I think is the most interesting part...one expert in a forum I had posted on, responded after everyone else. He asked me if the heavy rains brought out toads! I said yes, in abundance! ( the pond I'm referring to is small, maybe only 8x10, 3 feet deep, but has tons of filteration on it so I can have a heavier fish load) Anywhoo, he said that the ph crash from the abundant rain weakened the fish, but the toxins from the toads breeding is what did them in. The day before I had commented to my husband just how many were in the pond. I had counted 23 PAIRs of toads. That's a lot of toadly man juice being sprayed in the water, plus toad tinkle, plus their normal skin toxins. Because toads have a slightly bitter toxic taste, the koi don't eat their toadpoles like they do frog tadpoles. Frogs also breed faster and the eggs float on the surface. Toads sort of "stew" for hours in the pond, leaving long strings off eggs all over everything. Usually, it doesn't make much of a difference, but when you have as many as I did, it totally pollutes the water with toxins and protien.
It all made a great deal of sense to me. But, being a non-stop thinker, I still had just a sminch of concern that it could have been something else? I dropped the water level and cried, and pulled out my jumbo 28 inch beauties and put them in the trash.
Because I had dropped the water level, the toads couldn't get in there (I have straight down sides, not gradual depths)
Next day, all of the toads had gone into the little pond, where I had all of my shubunkin and sarassa goldfish. Most were butterfly and around 14 -15 inches.
Almost all were dead....
Now I KNOW that toads are a problem! I don't mind a few, but I know to watch out for an abundance all at the same time. Last year I netted tons of them and relocated them to a stream back by a park. I'm going to begin doing that again, in combo with back washing the filter and adding some clean water.
Ugh....I've prepared for just about everything through the years. I've been very diligent about water quality, disease, protection. But ph combined with massive toad sperm was never even in my thinking pattern! Who knew???
Oh my gosh, Mary, I'm so sorry! I lost all but 12 of my koi due to our harsh winter. Biggest one I have left is probably about 10 inches. All the big ones gone. I so know how sad you're feeling.
Thank you so much for telling about the toads. I had no idea. I'll be watching better now. I do have a ton of tadpoles right now, but I'm pretty sure they're frogs.
Chin up! Start all over!
I am so very very sorry Mary. You are so great with your methodology on your fish and treatment of your ponds. Words just don't express my sympathy enough. To be so blindsided by what hasn't been a problem, at least a fatal one, before is ..... so shocking.
Very soooorrrry Merry. Terrible, terrible!!!
Belle
Mary glad you shared this. Yesterday there was 8 pair of toads breeding around the edge of the larger pond on the wood beams. This morning all the larger fish were swimming around and acting like they were breeding or spawning. Water was toped with much foam and I thought it was probably eggs. This afternoon they calmed down and only saw 2 pair of toads.
First thing in the morning I will do water test and get rid of ALL the toads. I can relocate them to canal. Now I'm really concerned.
Was the water in the 2 ponds affected foamy??
Would appreciate your calling me.
I certainly am sorry for all you lost. 352-3394-4883
Bonnie
Sorry Bonnie...just saw this (it's after 11pm) Yes, there was foam, which is a sign of too much protein. Usually, it's not a big deal, but I just had way too many all at the same time. I always have multiples in there, but I've never seen the amount of pairs I've seen over the past few days. If possible, drop the water a bit and add some fresh water in there if you think you've had toad spawning and fish spawning on top of it.
Wow Mary - I am so sorry. Who would have thought.
I think we all need to pay attention to this - I don't see many toads in my yard, however, I am sure if conditions are right, that could change.
Damien hooked up the pressure filter today. Not sure if he did the 55W UV. I was busy planting my raised beds and cutting suckers from my caragena. More things popping up around the yard. I fed my fish and they are starting to look for the food. I will be spending a lot of time around the pond this summer if the weather just holds. By fall the pond should be full of fish. Those from last year that are bigger, those I kept in the tank in doors and now in the pond, and babies that came out of the ice ranging from teeny tiny to suprisingly larger ones. Wonder if they are actually second year babies. Most are black. I had forgotten that I had bought a blackish koi with a bit of dark orange. It is a female judging by all the chasing going on. She must be the source of all the dark babies.
M Mary that's exactly what I did plus tested for everything. Foam disappeared by night time.
I was out there at 10PM with spotlight checking on them. Can you tell I panicked after reading your post. Went into water and moved my hands around to see if there were any strings of eggs in there. I didn't have near the amount of toads you had.
Went to a site for further toad info. Repeated about what you said. I certainly will be more watchful from here on. Don't understand why there were none around little pond. Never found a 1. When I first saw them I could easily have netted them all up but thought they were harmless. Thanks so much Mary for making us all aware.
Elfie, I wouldn't use roofing liner for a pond liner. Too many chemicals on it. Just my thoughts.