How did the winter treat your fishes

[dieselplower]

Since we had a couple of sunny above freezing days in a row here I decided I would turn on my pump and get the water flowing and the filters going. All the ice has melted. I have not found any dead fish. I have a ton of string algae. I wanted to get the pump going asap this year to see if it would help establish the benificial bacteria sooner and keep me out ahead of an algae bloom / green water.

 

[milocat2012]

Hello, I have a question: Does anybody have a problem this year with string algae in the winter? This winter my pond got over grown with huge size long string algae. About 10 days ago i tried to clean the pond and prepare it for restart, but unfortunately my pond Vac 4 did do any good to clean up all that algae it wasn't sucking hardly any of it up. So i ended up just going around the pond bottom with the net trying to get as much of it out as i can. I took me almost a whole day and i took out about 2 bucketful of that stuff, but still a lot of it was left on the walls. So i decided to restart filter and i had to clean up both of my intake baskets as well as my pre filter pump basket every couple of days. They all where clogged with algae solid. But today 10 day later, the water was barely going thru again, so after my usual routing of cleaning baskets i decided to backwash my Ultima 2 filter with no luck: backwash function wasn't working at all. After opening the head of the filter i discovered that pre filter basket and all the media got clogged up with string algae. Now i'm stuck: i washed pre filter basket out, but how do i clean the media. I drain the filter and started to take media out but still not sure how to free that media off all the string algae. This filter is a;mast new: i only bought about a year ago i'm not sure if i'd have to end up replacing all the media, witch would be pretty costly to do, or maybe anybody has ideas how to clean those tiny media pellets? on the pictures you can see how that algae still looks on my pond walls, as well as how it clogs pre filter baskets, filter media and just after i clean it and throw it on the ground and later it dries up. So any ideas as how to clean it of the media and also how to control it in the pond would be appreciated. One thing i know that unfortunately UV lights can't control and kill it as they do with the floating algae.View attachment 67336 View attachment 67337View attachment 67336 View attachment 67337 View attachment 67336 View attachment 67337

 

[dieselplower]

Lots of people with string algae issues currently.

Also, just found a dead goldfish at the bottom.

 

[Sunshine]

Mine started last winter. Had it hanging from the waterfall. It lived all winter and in to spring & summer. I pulled it out, it came back. It was there all summer on the sides, the lilies, the waterfall. This horribly cold winter this year must of killed it. There is just a little bit here and there in the pond and none hanging from the waterfall. I fear when it does get warm, it will come back with a vengeance.

 

[milocat2012]

Well i always had it on the water fall, which i learn to easily control: just turn off your pump and sprinkle the powdered algaecide: as Green clean or similar products directly on the algae blooms of your waterfall. wait about 30 min and turn your pump back on. It kills the blooms on site. the trick is that you don't let the strings to grow long at all and treat it as soon as you see just a little green appear on the rocks. that wouldn't create a mess in your pond from long dead strings of algae going back in your pond and clog your filters. Usually i do it once a week, but when the weather gets real warm some times more often. It's very easy method for waterfalls, it doesn't hurt fish at all. I've been doing it for couple of years. Unfortunately for pond walls, it's not usable, as you can't drain your pond to sprinkle it on the walls. I had a little bit of problems with it last winter, but never this bad like now. I know that a lot of people dealing with it right now, so i'm hoping that maybe somebody came up with some kind of an idea, solution of this problem.

 

[waynefrcan]

...we keep our trout in a 5000 gallon pond with a stream and waterfall. Our pump, shown below, runs at 14000 cfs to provide a constant, well oxygenated flow rate. They are much more energetic feeders then our koi and readily accept food between 43-75 F (6-23 C).
View attachment 67329 View attachment 67330 View attachment 67331

I like your natural looking pond, can we get more pics?

 

[waynefrcan]

The really cold climate ponders such as me, also please chip in once you see some water

 

[Troutredds]

More pics:

 

[Dave 54]

Weve been outdoors now for 5 years of our 27 years of koi keeping and as of yet string algae has never struck down our pond, yes we have algae on the sides and bottom of the pond but that all and that is cropped short byour koi throughout the year part of which during the summer we are in full sun .
The only thing we seem to do different from everyone else is carry on as normal throughout the winter months with regular water changes we make sure our filtration is cleaned prior to winter in late autumn however we have a huge three bay vortex style set of filters and a bio filter made from a rather large chmical barrel.
We never allow the water to freeze and only start feeding our koi again very slowly with a handful of wheatgerm and garlic to start with working up to the three times daily summer mix of foods .
The filters are clean once in late spring , once in mid to late summer and last in late fall/Autumn
Our pond covers are see through policarbonate roofing
Question how many members with just mechanical filtration get string algae and how many get the same with bog filters or is it just our total different approach that is stopping us getting this form of algae?

Dave

 

[milocat2012]

I had several ponds for the period of 14 years and never had this stuff as bad as i have it now. Always had it on the waterfall in the summer, but learn to control it. It would be only a guess but maybe the string algae growth like this could've been caused by the fact that this winter i decided to keep the water temp. higher and more stable by adding more deicers and heating up water by them. Since i had some fish sickness/losses last winter, i kept the water within the range of 38-45 F and kept it from freezing. Cost a fortune to rune those deicers, but it help the fish not to go into the sleeping sickness stage again. Couple of my smaller koi were rolling over on it's sides but when i started to hit up the water it helped them and i didn't have to bring any of them inside like i did all last winter. I'm guessing that warmer then usual in the winter water temp also promoted this spike of string algae growth. My pump was off since mid December, as we had exceptionally cold winter this year and my waterfall started to have a lot of ice from splash and was afraid that it would freeze and direct water out the pond. So from mid December to beginning of march i have aerator 3 deicers and a pond breather going. I'd have to figure out a way how to prevent this spike of string algae from growing next winter, but first i'd have to solve this problem now somehow.

 

[Dave 54]

Sleeping sickness normally only effects koi of under two years of age so any of your koi over that age are not in any danher of succumming to it .
As I've mentioned we never in the 5 years weve been outdoors in our 27 years of keeping koi had any trouble with string algae and we even ge direct sunlight in the summer months our only algae is closely cropped on the sides and bottom of our pond we never turn our filtration off have co,mpletely lagged and boxed in the pond and filters we carry on with water changes and filter maintenance throughout the winter with no problem whatsoever

Dave

 

[j.w]

Lost 2 little tiny goldfish so far but that's it. They were pretty scrawny looking. Hoping that's it for casualties. That's pretty much the way it is every Spring and then plants start growing, fish get fed and life goes on. The new prefilter seems to be keeping the water clear of debris. Might need to net out a small amount when it warms up some. Do a partial water change, take the water lilies out and repot w/o soil.
All the other fish are out swimming when the sun comes out and down they go when it gets colder

 

[milocat2012]

You're lucky Dave! as for sleeping sickness i didn't know anything about it till last year it happened to my fish, and you're the only person that gave me reasonable explanation as of what was happening to my fish. However both of the fish that were affected by it were over 2 years old: the were 3 years old last winter. But they're raised in Hawaii in warm climate, and last winter was their 1st winter in the cold climate. One of them i managed to save, but the other one unfortunately didn't make it. This year at the end of fall 2 of the other fish started to roll over on their sides and were just lying there. that was the only symptom they had: unlike the one ones they didn't just swim laps, but to me it was very weird to see fish just lying on the side and look completely dead, but when you touch it it would just pick itself up and straighten out, but later roll over on the side again. It seemed to help when i added another deicer and kept water temperature more stable. I just didn't feel to have to all winter have the Q tank in my garage again: it take up half of the space there. one of the fish that was rolling up was 3 YO and i had him 1.5 years, and the other one was under 2 years. Also in the beginning of march the other koi (4 YO) now starred to roll over too. He was doing it last winter a lot also, but this winter i only saw him to roll a few times then he stopped. It's just weird i'm not sure why they're doing it, and never saw anything like this before in any of the previous winters. So far water temp. reached 48 F today, but our weather here in NJ in march was crazy: the temperature swings were going off the chart: from 65 F one day it was dropping to 20 F next. Mean while have to shut the pump off yesterday due to clogged filter problem, and hopping to figure out in the next couple of days how to clean the media, so i can restart. But if i do so i'd have to keep it off filtration and just keep it on recirculate and just use my other 4 waterfall filter boxes as a filtration. I sure wouldn't want to make the same mistake and clog the Ultima with strings again. now the only aerator is in the pond. Also yesterday while i was cleaning i noticed that my big oranda fish if not doing too well, also rolled over on it's side. I took him in in the garage and trying to slowly warm up the water. So far it's up to 51 F, i put some Mela- Pima fix with some antibiotic in the water hoping that he'd recover. I had him from the beginning when first started ponds for about 12-13 years: he was leaving in 2 different ponds i owned. couple years ago i got another baby oranda and he's doing well, but the big one not so much. I'm not even sure what's the life span of oranda fish, i know he's at least 12 YO maybe svn more. Maybe he's just too old? i attached a picture of him in my garage now, he tries to swim sometimes, but has trouble with it.

 

[sharpchick]

Only lost one ryukin - although I hated it. He was prone to bouyancy issues and had gone completely upside down when I could see under the ice.

 

[wispfox]

I'm beginning to wonder if _any_ of my fish made it this year. If any did, it'll be some of the tiny babies from last year.

Unfortunately, we cannot tell if the power goes out to the pond, and evidently it did at some point, thus meaning that they had no heater.

I know that I have a living tadpole (but no living frogs) and a pond snail. Sadness...