Aerator and bottom heater?

[crsublette]

Wayne, I think the best you can do is trying to keep an extremely small hole open somewhere and hope for the best.

If your fish are dieing to something, then start looking for some help on the fish. Folk here might help ya and there might be a koi club near ya that wouldn't mind doing a scrape and scope to help diagnosis the fish.

 

[callingcolleen1]

Charles, the PH here in my tap water is close to 9 if not 9 half the time. It is a fact that with a high PH the ammonia becomes toxic. Is it is VERY possible that a too clean pond will have more ammonia! Plus when you clean your pond to death you kill much of the benificial bacteria, snails, etc that really do keep the pond clean! Charles, I have never cleaned my ponds since they were built, granted I did take the bottom pond apart two years ago to make it bigger, but I was careful to preserve some of the natural pond sediment, that was attached to the very very large sweet flag. I really do believe that if the water is balanced and "living" with all the essential microscopic life, that you will have a cleaner, healthier pond than the much of the water coming out of the tap!

Charles you like to debate that is clear. How is your pond doing?

Right now it is like 51 degrees here, warm windy strong Chinook, blew in yesterday morning and stil blowing! I think I am warmer right now than you Charles!

 

[Craig58]

Colleen,

Have you taken your tap water and placed it in a jar, stirred it well for about 5 minutes and tested it?

I ask this because I've seen several places where the pH is very high, put once exposed to air and given a chance to react to the air, the pH will drop a lot.

Try testing the same sample every every ten minutes. Include 2 minutes of stirring after each test. I would suspect the pH will drop quite a bit.

Craig

 

[crsublette]

Charles you like to debate that is clear.

I'd be a terrible debator since I could be convinced of my opponent's arguments and actually start being his advocate rather than adversary.

CNYKOI - Ammonia Calculator. pH and water temperature are the two main variables that determine ammonia toxicity. If any ammonia is registered in a pond, then this is an indication that the pond's bio-filtration could be starting to fail.

I have talked many times why folk shouldn't think it is good to have a high pH. However, when evaluating the risk and maintenance, I would rather have a high pH (above 8.4) instead of a low pH (below 7.3) for an outdoor pond.

Colleen, with how ya describe it, your pond has a good amount of bio-filtration due to the various bacterias living in the muck, the plants consuming the NH4 (tougher for them to consume NH3), and your pond most likely has algae that consumes both types of ammonia directly. All ponds have algae and bacterias for it to be considered healthy. The algaes and bacterias are either found in the pond itself or found in the bio-filtration systems. The exact purpose of bio-filtration is to house the bacterias and algaes.

The idea a pond can remain as clean as tap water is quite a stretch. Even after weekly low dosages of potassium permanganate, the bacterias and algaes still replicate extremely quick.

It's like the cold virus or any other ailment. We do our best to wash our hands, take showers, and take our zinc and vitamin c, but the cold virus is still there. However, it will be much tougher for ya to get sick if ya properly take care of yourself. It is not a natural thing for us to take vitamins, take showers, and to do preventative care. A pond is not very different figureatively speaking.

How is your pond doing?

It's been doing great. I am currently planning the rennovation of my dinky little water feature into an actual pond. I never planned on this thing to be a pond. I was digging to put in one of those "pond less" water features, but I never stopped digging. Once I did stop digging, I realized how many crates and rock I would have ot put in to make it a "pondless" water feature. So, I said screw it and made it into a small 435gallon watergarden pond.

I still have not taken out the plants nor vacuumed out the leaves that have settled. I didn't put up my leaf net this year. I am suprised how resilient the Water Celery has been; it is still growing quite well even though our night temperatures drop down to the mid-teens to low twenties (*F).

 

[callingcolleen1]

Craig, I used to test my water for every day for years, it was always high, and we sell a "ton" of water conditioner salt by the pellets. Everybody knows this in town, we make jokes about it, got to use lots of detergent to get a couple bubbles! I have not tested it now for 10 or 12 years, and I have not tired that method. I have bottled water delivered here to drink, and the guy that provides the water tells me it is very high too, as he has to test always. I used bottled water too because otherwise the coffee pot and stuff gets lots of "sediment" from all the minerials in the water. The pond gets straight tap water when just topping it off, I don't even bother to sample anymore. Maybe I will get another test kit and provide my "water readings"!

Charles, I have read that ammonia tests can be deceiving, There can be an ammonia bubbles or spike, that won't always register, but the plant tips can indicate ammonia when the tips start turning yellow. I don't get colds, haven't had one for many years... "knock on wood", maybe cause I am exposed to them so much at work, must have built up a resistance to colds over the years.

Wayne, I forgot to mention that my big tin foil barb fish that I have in this 100 gallon tank in the house had fungas a couple weeks ago, I never touched him, or changed the water for a couple months, or anything cause I was so darn busy, and now it just went away! Fish can also get fungus if they get injured too and I think that he bumped his head on the glass too much and may have gotten injured as he is too big and swims way to fast, sometimes I think he may break the glass! That is why I put the tin foil barb outside in the summer. Fungus can be bad and kill fish, but not always. Fungus is to fish, what infection is to humans, when we get injured, we can get an infection and it is possible to die, but not always the case.

 

[brandonsdad02]

Colleen. You need to get that tin foil barb a padded tank lol. We have really hard water here too. There is a whiteish powder sometimes on the rocks of the pond during the summer when I have to top off the water often. It's just lime scale from the hard water. I have never tested the water. All the fish are happy, plants are green and healthy and the plants in the bog exploded this summer.

 

[Eric]

I really think the cold water makes the fish stupid. Pea Brain freeze. They swim around the pond and can't remember where the warm and best O2 is. Why else would a large goldfish go to the coldest end of the pond. That's why I put a aeration zone there, as last winter was some fish kills at that end.

Yes my pond got cleaned out right before freeze up. I will test some pond samples today. The bottom heater is slowly raising the overall pond temp as I see open areas where there is no heater or aerator.

Most of what they do they do at an instinctual level......though they also learn quite quickly within their limitations....
So there may be a reason you don't understand.......

Can you give us pictures. If you are going to "give up" put some Ammonia binder in the pond and keep a hole open in the ice.
hope you keep trying, though I know it can be painfully frustrating.

Regards, Eric

 

[waynefrcan]

Ok results of water test after reaching room temp.

Ammonia is 1 ppm
Nitrite 0
Nitrate o
PH 7.7
KH 180 ppm
GH 180 ppm

What do I use to knock the ammonia down that won't break the bank at 6500 US gal? I only see the same one goldfish with the fungus. There is 50 in there at different sizes, most are smaller.

thks

 

[crsublette]

Looks good. I wouldn't be concerned about the Ammonia ... not yet that is, I see it is climbing though. I would get some ammonia binder ready and figure a way if you can do a water change, not yet tho. 1ppm Total Ammonia is still ok.

At the cold 39*F water temperatures and 7.7ph, using the calculator I mentioned, the toxic NH3 ammonia is only at .0095ppm at 50*F so it is probably lower at 39*F. I wouldn't be concerned about the ammonia until it gets to 2ppm. If it does, then get the ammonia binder ready or have a plan on how a water change would happen. If Total Ammonia reaches close to 5ppm, then I would do something to fix that.

Just a .1 pH increase will double or even triple the NH3 volume. If it starts to get warmer, then this will further increase the NH3. This would not be any problem under warmer conditions, but, since all or most bacteria shut down during the winter, it is enivitable to happen regardless of how ya keep your pond.

Paper pH strips and liquid pH tester tend to have an accuracy of +/-2 pH points, which is a big swing! There are digital pH tester that are accurate within +/- .02 to .01.

Also, Nitrites can be tolerated a little bit better than Ammonia, but I'd be careful still. There are filter mediums to reduce Nitrite, but the only other option during cold temperatures are water changes.

 

[waynefrcan]

You da man!, thanks for the help.

A water change right before freeze up I agree is not the best, but this year was a lot of other landscaping to do etc.

Inside new tank setups, the nitrite starts up after the ammonia spike? I agree I hope not, as it's way to cold to do water changes, but not impossible.

What about shutting down the bottom heater to reduce overall temp to stop or kill the fingus? Your fav female forum pal is against it.

 

[crsublette]

Yeah, nitrites show up after ammonia is registered during warm water temps. Honestly, I would be suprised to see any nitrites since the bacteria are dormant during your Winters, but something could happen that we don't understand causing an increase in nitrites.

Yeah, be careful with the water changes also. I would do them very slow so that you don't change the water temperature too much causing stress to the fish. I have my flow through system insulated so my water change is extremely slow and constant 24/7. It might be something to think about to do when everything thaws out.

In regards to the heater, I would much rather have some surface area exposed. I personally doubt turning off the heater could fix the fungus problem, but it could happen. Just kind of spitballing here. I think it's pretty tough to figure what to do when the pond is iced over during the middle of Winter. You'll just have to roll with the punches, hope for the best, and learn from the ailments and errors to be better prepared for the next round the following year.

 

[callingcolleen1]

Wayne My though is the ammonia was building under the ice for quite a while, and you did mention that the fish that got sick was big, so that itself was a "ammonia" clue as the large fish succumb to ammonia more quickly than the small, as they use more oxygen to breathe as they are larger, and so took in more ammonia instead. I suspect that the fish suffered from an ammonia buildup, and originally the ammonia must have been higher before you opened a hole in the ice. Now that you have the hole open, the ammonia "spikes"can release more easy.

I would do a partial water change to get rid of some of the problem, and keep the heater on and keep a large hole open in the ice to allow the gases that build up to escape and prevent further damage to the fish, as ammonia is the greater concern, the fungus probally was the result of the ammonia build up under the ice. If you leave the hole open and the water warmer with the heater, the fish will slowly heal. if you shut the heater off, the ice will close and the ammonia won't have an escape hole and you will re-stress the fish yet again. The fish can recover sometimes if you keep the water warmer, the fish's metabolism will "speed up" and heal a little faster. The fungus was a result mostly likely of an ammonia spike under the thick ice.

 

[callingcolleen1]

Wayne, How is it going today?? Can you just overflow the pond? Do you have a built in overflow? Even just adding some fresh water might help lots. Must suck to have such long periods of cold weather! I see that you are sometimes like 10 degrees colder than me these days. Good luck! Hope its going OK

 

[dieselplower]

Wayne, How is it going today?? Can you just overflow the pond? Do you have a built in overflow? Even just adding some fresh water might help lots. Must suck to have such long periods of cold weather! I see that you are sometimes like 10 degrees colder than me these days. Good luck! Hope its going OK

That is an interesting idea. Would putting a hose in the pond lift the ice in the pond so that it could be moved? Probably too heavy depending on the thickness.

 

[callingcolleen1]

I was thinking Wayne could over flow his water if he has a overflow spillway built in like mine, to add fresh water and that would freshen up his pond a little. Nobody going to lift heavy thick ice, no sense even taking the ice off as it would just refreeze hard even with a heater in just a few short hours, way up in Edmonton with those cold temperatures today!