My goldfish pond

[callingcolleen1]

My basement is old, like the house, but they made the basement walls with concrete that is over a foot thick, and the floor is all concrete too, no cracks in the old cement floor that I have ever seen, never had water in my basement either. I think this house was raised off the original foundation many years ago and the floor was made extra thick as we live on the flood plain. This house flooded in the past over 60 years ago, cause we found a picture of the house with water all around from the very early 50's. We have had some close calls over the years, water came a couple feet from the front door one year, we were lucky to not get any water or sewer in the basement though.
Glad to hear your fish are all fine and never swam out of the pond!

 

[CometKeith]

Colleen, Thanks, it actually made it into the 60's today. I think this is only the second or third time that has happened this year and one of the times was in January. Other than the couple baby fish that din't make it through the winter everybody else is doing really well. I have not seen any sign of disease or isolationism that fish seem to exhibit before you notice their health is poor. I am thinking of getting a second bio-filter because the one I have is probably not enough for my expanded population of fish. It is definitely over 30 now with all the babies from last year. I used to think more than a dozen fish were too many! Well the babies will grow eventually so I have to think of something. I have tried mentioning to my wife that I am expanding the pond but she is not going for it, so maybe a second bio-filter is the only way to go as long as I have two pumps. CE probably they had problems with mudslides or some weird force against the foundation that collapsed it. I have also seen some foundations and wall sections that were supposed to prevent tornadoes from twisting a house off the foundation. I know you love your frogs. I thought I saw a frog jump out of my flower planter the other day because there was a nice splash that probably wasn't from a fish, but tonight I sat by the pond and saw a small bullfrog poke his head out in the same spot and watched him for a while. Yea!! Warm weather is finally coming! They are predicting 70's this week.

 

[callingcolleen1]

Yes it is good to have lots of circulation in spring, especially as the pond fish load grows' and to churn up the bottom of pond so excess waste does not built up. Today I hooked up an new pump that I bought a couple years ago on a really cheap sale, at this greenhouse. I got the pump for 75% off and you can't pass up a deal like that! The pump is the biggest pump yet, at 1200 GPH, the middle pond is "gushing" and churned up pond sediment off the bottom of the pond and sucked it into the big pre-filter. I also bought another pre-filter and hooked two of them together for more powerful filtration. A good pre-filter will extend the pumps life as well as it improves the energy conversion to water flow. I have four big pumps with pre-filters now running the three connecting ponds.... every couple years the KOI fish get bigger and the pond appears smaller!! Ha ha ha. I put the smaller winter pumps away now as good circulation is important as the hot sun is getting higher in the sky every day. Soon the sun will be at it's highest peak on June 21, and beating directly down on the pond.

I am going to look online to see if I can find this filter at a cheaper price, as this pet store in town has great stuff but he charges an "arm and a leg" at $75.00 for one. That's 150 for the two together!! The filter is called an "ez Bio 20 filter" made by Matala. I have found that good filters can cost a lot but I think I will get at least 10 or 15 years out of this filter, if not longer!

 

[CountryEscape]

Holy cow, Colleen, that's a lot for those filters, but if they do the job, then they are worth it. I don't have a pre-filter on any of my pumps. Have two 4200 gph on milk crates, one in each pond. Koi pond pump goes to the Skippy and fountain, goldfish pond large pump feeds the bog. Skimmer pumps have a filter before them I guess, one feeds the stream, the other feeds the bog in koi pond. So, the only filters I check/clean are on my skimmers. This time of year they seems to get algae on them. Goldfish skimmer had a bunch of sunflower seeds that it sucked up, and then the stupid things sprouted! What a mess. Got to move that bird feeder. Don't want so many sunflower sprouts in the pond and edge anyhow.
Keith, glad you're finally getting some warm temps. Only supposed to be low 60's here, but close to 70 tomorrow. Cloudy and chilly today, but got to get my butt outside and get the Skippy hooked back up. Been running water into laundry basket full of quilt batting at the bottom of the waterfall since the line broke, but kept water in the Skippy after I rinsed out the filter media, so it's ready to go. Will put some of the quilt batting in there, too, to keep whatever good bacteria has started.

 

[callingcolleen1]

Holy Moly!! I so need to get a real lap top, maybe very soon, this dumb tablet is crashing all the time cause I got too much pictures and stuff clogging it up!! I seen some nice big notebooks that hold more info and they fold up nice for about 400 dollars. If they help me get my pictures and stuff off this dumb tablet and take time to show me some stuff as I am sooo dumb with computers, I will buy one!

I see that the filters are only $40 on line at the Matala site so I will try again to order one online. Last night I tried to order off amazon.com as they were $39. But a error came up with my address?? Maybe they don't ship to Canada?

These filters work really good for me and you can connect two or three together for a better filter. Plus the pre-filters have never ever froze up for me, even with temperatures of minus 45 and below.

CE how do you prevent fish and stuff from getting sucked into that massive pump without any pre pump filter? Did you make something?

This morning by the pond, water is clearer now, yesterday it was a mess after cleaning filters and hooking up the bigger pump. I find that in the early spring I too get smear alage that floats on surface, but if you have extra water flow and good thrashing of water to distub the water surface, it will go away fast.

 

[CountryEscape]

Colleen, the baby fry could easily go into/through the pump in the pond, but I figure they stay away from the middle open part of the pond anyhow. The skimmer pulls in stuff from the top, and I've had to save frogs, turtles, fish from the basket inside it. There is a basket, then a "wall" filter before the pump, but tiny stuff can get over the top or around the sides of the wall, so tiny fry would end up going through them, I guess. Not worried, I don't try to save all lives. LOL The big pumps have a shield over the intake, I guess I didn't say that. That shield has slots on it that are maybe 1/2" wide by 4" long. So, anything smaller than that can and does go through the pump to the bog or Skippy. Again, anything that gets too close learns to stay away, or gets sucked in. I can't save everything. I doubt that babies get sucked into the pump much, though. They tend to stay near the plants on the edges so are safer.
You sure have some chubby fish there, Colleen!!!
OK, time for me to get outside and get something done. Too many lists of things to do today to be still sitting on my butt at the computer. Good luck getting a new computer, Colleen. They have laptops that have lots of memory, too. Let them know what you need and go from there. Maybe instead of saving your pics on your notepad, you can put in a jump drive (stick that inserts into USB port) and save them all on there instead. That would save your space on notebook/notepad. Ask about that, too! Any place that sells computers the people are very knowledgeable about how things work, just take your paper and pen with you to take down notes!

 

[callingcolleen1]

Thanks CE, I heard about those Jump drives and will look for those types as I am a "picture holic" ha ha ha.
I got to get off my butt too or the day will be gone!! I want to get lots done today... trouble is where to start?? So much to do, so little time....

 

[CometKeith]

Colleen, I found that filter at azponds for $52 if you can't get the factory to ship to you direct. I have bought a few things from them and their prices are good. So let me understand this. You are intentionally stirring up the bottom? i thought before your pond gets to 60 degrees F you should try to avoid making a mess because it will stir up the bad bacteria when your fish still have low resistance. I have done very little of anything this year and this is the first year my fish look pretty good in the spring. I doubt it's your pictures that are crashing your computer. You can check how much memory is being used. It might have a virus or too many programs running all at once. CE, I agree. The pond is hopefully a natural thing and fry,tadpoles.snails, etc can get sucked up by your pump. I'm sure things get sucked up into by bio-filter but I don't go opening it during the season to see! My old pump had a pre-filter and there were always interesting things in it like a fish that looked like it had wings..baby dragonfly!

 

[CountryEscape]

I think stirring up the bottom this time of year, before the plants are in full swing, is what turned my koi pond murky last year. Not sure, but this is going to be my test year. Last year I netted the stuff on the bottom when spring started early in March. This year, I've left everything on the bottom. Water is crystal clear. I intend to net the bottom muck, but wait until the water temp is steady over 60 and I can add my beneficial bacterial product that helps "matt" the stuff on the bottom. It's great, all I have to do is grab one end, and it comes out like a rug. Usually get 3 "rugs" out from the 19x9 area, and it's all cleaned up! By then the Skippy will have good bacteria growing well, too. I'll add the Pond Perfect stuff in the filter and in each of the ponds once a week for at least 3 weeks after water temp gets warmer, before I net the bottom. We shall see if that helps make a difference in the clarity of the water. The goldfish pond never was anything but clear, but last year was it's first year. I was impressed with no green water, but then I used about 400 gals from the koi pond to get it started off well, and it has a much larger bog to filter the water, too.

 

[callingcolleen1]

Keith, I do my own thing and don't listen to anyone about their theory on bacteria, I have my own theory... In nature the spring runoff occurs early and churns up the water nicely, as soon as the ice breaks up, and this gets rid of the winter sludge before it can become problematic and make the water quality low. Some people claim that my water temperature is too cold in the winter with the pumps running, but the fish were just fine, like every winter, for the last 20 years, so why would I change now? I do this every spring and my view is good water quality is essential to fish health.

I start messing with the ponds as soon as it is warm enough for my hands to reach into water and get filters, always on a nice day, and we have had several nice days. My water temperature right now is barely 50 degrees, and as soon as the extra filters were hooked up, the really big fish looked much more lively and were swimming around and eating at the algae on the sides of the pond. The top pond fish are very very large and require lots of oxygen and good water quality. I have also netted the excess sludge from here and there. The bottom pond has shallow warmer water areas in the marsh were the smaller goldfish can warm themselves in the sun. Everybody looks really really good and I think that making the quality of the water better is first and foremost in my opinion. A very long long time ago, someone I knew once told me that gold fish and koi were "cold water" fish, not warm water fish, and that like trout fish, the colder the water the fresher and less diseased the fish are. I have been following this principle for many many years now and have not seen diseased fish since the first couple of years, like 19 years ago, when the temperature of my ponds were too warm one summer. I don't believe that ice cold running water kills fish, or my fish would have been dead long, long ago....

However, if you normally winter the fish inside, they may be weaker and not used to the ice cold water, or if the fish lay under thick ice with poor circulation and water quality all winter, then they will be weaker too so you will have to go slow for sure then. You should use your own judgement as you know your own own pond best, and slowly increase the circulation as I have done over the last couple of weeks.

Pictures from yesterday with the pond night lights on, and the other day, the big orange koi was looking to eat my finger!

 

[callingcolleen1]

I forget I to mention that this filter is just cheaper for me to get at the pet store, the pet store guy gave me a discount and I only paid 65 Canadian dollars. I tired to order online from the states where it is cheaper, some places rejected my address, maybe cause it is in Canada, and once you convert the dollar and include shipping to Canada it was just not worth the wait. I looked to order from Canadian suppliers online, and it was the same price ($74.) as the pet store here in town. So in the end I got it cheaper cause I got a discount, and the pet store was only 5 minutes away.

I am going to get one or two more of these filters once the guy gets another shipment in. I discovered that two filters connected together really suck the crud and sludge up quick and I get even better flow with the 1200 GPH pumps.

Keith I don't have a computer, only this "Acer (touch screen) tablet" and it does not have that much space left on the memory. I can put a really tiny disc into the top but I have not been able to transfer over 4000 pictures and video to the disc, I was told I needed to do this with a computer... so I will have to go find a computer that folds down (lap top) cause I don't want a big bulky thing as I have little space left in my house full of fish tanks... need to be able to out the thing away on book shelf!

 

[CometKeith]

CE, the pond perfect stuff sounds interesting. I try to avoid any type of chemicals as much as possible but this might be a good idea. There is a lot of sludge on the bottom of my pond and if I try to net it then it goes flying in all directions. Do I need to put it in the filter? Can i just dump it in? Colleen, I agree about the running water. I try to keep my pumps going as much as possible and even had it running below freezing this year until it all froze up on me. My issue is: Am I stirring up bad bacteria when I try to net out leaves etc on the bottom? I have noticed a little flashing from a few fish the last day or so. Should I be worried? It seems that I always have problems in the spring. This is the first spring I haven't had a major problem. Is it because our temps have been cold and stable without a lot of swings up and down, or the fact that I have tried to not touch the pond and stir things up that have made the fish better? Also i have not plugged in my ionizer yet because I read somewhere it can kill beneficial bacteria along with algae when you start it in the spring. I don't know if that helped by not turning it on. I did lift my pond cyprus from the bottom today where I put it every winter and sat it up on a shelf, so I did agitate the stuff on the bottom a little when I did that. Hopefully that won't create a problem. One of my lilies pots is on the bottom because it fell last fall. I really want to get that up onto a shelf tobviously if I was a scientist I would try changing only one thing every year and see if that made a difference. The weather is one thing I can't do anything about. Last year it got really hot here in March and much cooler in April and I think that might have been bad for the fish. Maybe it took too long for the pond to cycle because of the drop in temps? I did notice ammonia readings were really high in April last year.

 

[ponder630]

CometKeith, I've always used a 15 gallon ShopVac to vacuum the layer of sludge and did it last weekend. I've learned to suck up a bit at a time never letting the shop vac turn it self off , lift the tube up so no water/sludge falls back into the pond and let the pump, pump out the dirty water. After 3 full vacuums I turn it off and use a net and net off and solids to prevent clogging. Kept doing that a few times and my water isn't really stirred up that way.

When I first tried the vacuum last year I got greedy and vacuumed too ,inch and the shop vac turned it self off breaking the suction, so any sludge in the tube went back into the pond making it black last year. My fish survived that last year so it "shouldn't be too harmful" but I'm by no means am expert too. Just my own experience with stirred up muck.

 

[callingcolleen1]

I would net out the botton and let the filters suck up the fine stuff. When I hooked up the new big pump the crap and sludge on the bottom of the ponds went flying and it looked like quite the mess. The newly extended filters and bigger pump sure picked up lots of pond guck, as the pond was nice and clear within a few hours. The fish are all swimming fast and starting to nibble on my fingers again! I have extra pumps and filters set up early every spring because the quality of the water can drop fast when the hot spring sun beats down on the pond. It is better to clean up some of the sludge quickly before the water can turn toxic with ammonia. The plants are just now coming back to life and cannot keep up with the excess winter load still sitting on the pond bottom. If the fish are flashing that is your warning!

 

[CometKeith]

Thanks ponder630. I know a lot of people use a shop vac. Is there a special attachment you put on it to get the sludge and not just the water in the pond? Colleen, Every year I net the bottom of all the sludge and every year I have the same problem with the fish getting sick. I have seen where waterbugs says to not even look at your pond between 42-62 degrees because you will be stirring up harmful bacteria and I think he may be right. i'll see if i can find one of his quotes. This is the first year I have cooled it and really not done anything and the fish are doing well. So as you can see I'm pretty conflicted. Sit back and do nothing or get busy but maybe create more problems!