CW's Back Yard Water Garden Begins!

[combatwombat]

@Pablo: Been trying to better understand why I'm showing small amounts of ammonia, but no nitrites or nitrates. I guess it's possible that only the bacteria is digesting ammonia and there just still isn't enough yet. And then the algae is outcompeting the plants for nitrates.

I feel like if this were a brand new pond and I were showing tests with any ammonia at all, the advice would be "do not add fish yet." But I could be wrong...

 

[GBBUDD]

Ammonia is what creates nitites once bacteria starts to do it's thing converting ammonia it lessens to nitrite and nitrite once bacteria gets to work on it turns to nitrate.

 

[GBBUDD]

Cw the pond I showed you the other day was just shown in video on Koimarkets fb account you should check it out

 

[Pablo]

I do enjoy the research. I end up reading a lot and learning more in depth the issues you bring up. You are right that fish and overfeeding them could increase ammonia levels. But decaying organic materials can increase it also, so as much as you are manually removing the algae there is probably a lot of dead algae. Ironically the algae can help lower the ammonia levels. Where you do not have fish I would guess the ammonia levels are not that critical, of course it can be deadly for fish in a short amount of time.
A good analysis was in this University of Kentucky paper on ammonia in fish ponds:

Redirect Notice

 

[Lisak1]

@Pablo said what I was going to say - when you said your Irises are struggling, that's a sign right there. You should be yanking those things out by the 50 gallon trash can full. Which is exactly what I had to do yesterday. They are one of the best at eating up nutrients in your pond - the roots on mine go 2/3 of the way to the bottom of my pond. Fish will get your plants popping to the point where you will be spending all your pond maintenance time just yanking and thinning. And you won't have string algae to consume your day.

I use sodium per carbonate on the string on my waterfall - love the stuff - and also use it as a "microbe-lift" product int the spring to bring up all he debris that collected over winter. I prefer it for ease of use over the liquid H2O2.

 

[combatwombat]

Did the hydrogen peroxide treatment this weekend. Diluted a gallon of 12% down to 6% with pond water and applied with a garden sprayer. Worked very well where algae was exposed to air. Worked okay where it was slightly underwater. Poor results on anything more than about 6" below the surface. Probably too much organic material in the water... used up its fire power on that instead of the algae.

Looking a lot better, though. Now, I think the next step is to try to find some muck or a plant from the local wetland to toss in the pond and hopefully seed it with some more bacteria.

@Lisa K: Maybe I'll just go get a bunch of feeder goldfish and see what happens. I'm still not sure why I'm showing 0.25ppm ammonia when, for so long, I saw nothing. And good call on the sodium percarbonate. Seems like a much better solution than trying to store H2O2 in liquid form. And can probably deliver to deep water more effectively, too.

 

[YShahar]

In addition to what @Lisak1 and @Pablo said about fish giving the higher-level plants a leg up on the string algae, there's also the fact that goldfish love to much on string algae. So do koi, apparently. I've got string algae in my streams, but none at all in the pond. Whenever a clump of it goes over the falls, the fish are all over the stuff.

So yes, fish will bring your pond from the era of single-celled organisms and primitive plant life all the way up to the Cretaceous. Before you know it, you'll have herds of diplodocus grazing on the bamboo!

 

[combatwombat]

Got in the pond yesterday morning to offer myself up as a human feast to the parasite. 24 hours later and no hives. I think we might have beaten it for now. Now I'll throw the kid in to duplicate the test.

 

[Lisak1]

Taking one for the team!

 

[Lisak1]

Taking one for the team!

 

[GBBUDD]

Taking one for the team!

make up your mind you doing one or two i think i see twozers

 

[GBBUDD]

Got in the pond yesterday morning to offer myself up as a human feast to the parasite. 24 hours later and no hives. I think we might have beaten it for now. Now I'll throw the kid in to duplicate the test.

I WOULD HAVE STARTED WITH THE KID

 

[GBBUDD]

In addition to what @Lisak1 and @Pablo said about fish giving the higher-level plants a leg up on the string algae, there's also the fact that goldfish love to much on string algae. So do koi, apparently. I've got string algae in my streams, but none at all in the pond. Whenever a clump of it goes over the falls, the fish are all over the stuff.

So yes, fish will bring your pond from the era of single-celled organisms and primitive plant life all the way up to the Cretaceous. Before you know it, you'll have herds of diplodocus grazing on the bamboo!

YOU TELL HIM @YShahar HE WON'T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT damn caps

 

[Lisak1]

To me, ecosystem only exists in a pond with the correct elements - water, plants and fish. Remove one element and the ecosystem is going to struggle. Then you'll need lots of intervention.

 

[TheFishGuy]

Got in the pond yesterday morning to offer myself up as a human feast to the parasite. 24 hours later and no hives. I think we might have beaten it for now. Now I'll throw the kid in to duplicate the test.

Good to hear!