New strain of algae?

[Dave 54]

Irregardless of the volume of ammonia, the ammonia should be addressed now rather than later, if it potentially gets worst. Honestly, with a proper system, there shouldn't be any ammonia registering at all, even during the transition between Winter and Spring.

Don't need to predict the future to know how fast the water temperatures are going to change the situation, especially since the author already mentioned it can change quite noticeable.

I know goldfish and carp can tolerate a higher level of ammonia, all the way up to near 1.0ppm NH3 (far above the chart indicates) as told to me by Mr. Peters while starting to cycle a new tank, but, personally, I would not push it to that limit.

I'm fully in agreement with you on this Charles.

rgrds

Dave

 

[sissy]

[sharedmedia=core:attachments:54183]
[sharedmedia=core:attachments:54182]for ammonia

 

[milocat2012]

thank you everybody for all the replies and the tips. I kind of forgot to about pump-UV compatibility: actually this spring i made a new set up for my pond: the Ultima2 6000 and the pump are brand new this season. Last season i had Ultima2 2000 that was run by 2 laguna MaxFlo 4200 pumps. both pumps were running together, giving good flow, but since then we expended our pond and i decided to change to a bigger filter and the pump: i checked pump and a filter compatibility, but forgot about the UV. Here's the info about the lights i have http://www.aquaultraviolet.com/products/uvsterilizers/classic/57watt and the other light:http://www.aquaultraviolet.com/products/uvsterilizers/classic/25wattAnd the pump: http://www.aquaticponds.com/Performance-Pro-Artesian-2-Pump-Low-RPM-A2-12-76--7560-GPH_p_1329.html Apparently the pump a little too powerful for UV lights, the max flow on the pump advertised as 7560 GPH the 57W UV recommends max flow 3200 gph. or course the pump doesn't produce it's max flow advertised, i'm guessing with all the piping plus i have the flow adjust valves on each waterfall return: after go thru ultima it returns thru 4 waterfall boxes it's probably reduced to 4500-5000 gph, I've run pums that exeded max flow for UV without problems before. But went out to lowes and got another main shut off valve and will install it tonight to reduce a flow a bit more. Luckily those pumps are designed for flow adjustment, so i've been told. Actually the water started finally clearing up. Not sure what's helping: the Green Clean algae site that i put on monday or the new 25W bulb i replaced. maybe combination of both. The problem was that when water was so cloudy with algae, i couldn't even vacuum the bottom of my pond that i usually do weekly, in hopes that it would help with ammonia problem. So it's been 2 weeks since i vacuum last as i couldn't see the bottom at all to know what i'm vacuuming out. Today for the first day i started to see the bottom a little bit. so if it goes well maybe by tomorrow i'll be ably o see it better and vacuum. As for chemicals that some of you referring to be dangerous, i don't usually use any chemicals at all this time i was a little desperate, and i use the only chemical that was proven save by my own use the whole last season: i used Green clean powder to keep my waterfalls free of ugly string algae. It's actually not only was ugly when it was growing on the rocks, but also was making big mess what it was dying and making my pond dirty with all those dead chunks floating around. So last season i was quite happy to find this product that it was just enough to sprinkle it on the rocks weekly and after 20 min pumps back on, and it was good buy to string algae, everything clean and clear. It never harm anything in my pond so i already knew it was safe.
As for ammonia, I retested it again this morning using 2 different tests, one I mention in my first post and this one: http://www.webbsonline.com/Item/Pond-Care-Master-Liquid-Test-13164 they're more or less the same. But it's hard to judge exactly by the color, but one showed around 2ppm and the other close to 4 of total ammonia. But then again I don't know if it's true reading. I ordered the test that Charles referred from amazon, so when I get it try to retest. The nitrites are not present, reading shows 0. At this point the fish are ok, but showed discomfort from ammonia before couple of weeks ago, but flashing and jumping, but as soon as I added ammo lock they calm down and look fine. But now I just keep adding till I'll be sure of true reading. It does get a bit expensive, but not see any other choice so far. That Waterbug is saying that growth of nitrifying bacteria refused significantly in colder water, and it's the only explanation I can come to, as clogged up filters can't be the reason: as I mention the ultima is new has been only run less then 2 months with weekly thorough backwashes, and the waterfall boxes media and pads had been thoroughly clean before storing for the winter, and I cleaned them again last week: if fact they weren't even dirty at all, I pour lots of beneficial bacteria directly into the filters. I do have bags of zeolite in my waterfall boxes along with the bio media. I'll try to recharge them in salt water, as I haven't done it in awhile. I'll apdate when I get new ammonia test.

 

[milocat2012]

Forgot to mention that the weather had been crazy here: yesterday and today in the day time is around 70F, then at night goes lower 40s sometimes upper 30s. So this morning the water temp was 58F. And by 2 p.m it gotten in upper 60s (closed to 68.) thinking till the weather establishes and nights would be hard to get filters working fully.

 

[sissy]

same weather here one day high 70's sunny and today only 65 and cloudy and 40's at night .Good for the gras but bad on me having to mow so often .

 

[crsublette]

Aaahh, ok. Cool. Makes more sense now. The ultima2 2000 is quite small, but ultimately depends on your fish stock density. Generally, choose the 2nd or 3rd size bigger bead filter is best to do if the desire is to use a bead filter. Ultima2 6000 sounds more reasonable, but, again, ultimately depends on your fish stock density, feeding frequency, and how clean you keep the pond and if you have any mechanical filtration prior to the filter

Yeah, if the ultima2 6000 is brand new this season, as ya say only been used for less than 2 months now, and since your waterfall filters were cleaned, then your bio-filters probably do not have an appropriately sized bacteria colony due to the cold/warm volatile water temperatures and this slow bacteria growth is allowing the ammonia to accumulate and feeding the fish just adds to the problem. Also, the same rules apply to the retail bacteria products regardless of them calling it "arctic blend" or "cold water bacteria". So, essentially, your bio-filters are failing you due to the lack of bacteria growth. As the weather warms up, it'll stabilize if the bio-filters are up to snuff.

I would definitely stop or extremely reduce feeding the fish until the ammonia issue is solved. Don't worry, they're not going to starve.

 

[milocat2012]

Ok, a little update: installed the valve yesterday, slowed down the flow, actually even looks better this way, was a bit too much flow in all the waterfalls before. the water finally crystal clear now, was able to vacuum the bottom, ammonia still present, just had to add more Ammo Lock today to protect the fish (had to order 2 more bottles of this stuff). Still waiting for new tester from Amazon. They don't really shop that fast this days: takes sometimes a few days just to get merchandise out the wearhouse to the mail. maybe will get it by the end of next week. if weather stays warmer maybe my filters will finally start working. included the picture of the water as clear as it it's now. It's just suddenly clear up in 2 days after over a week struggling with it getting worse every day.

 

[Ruben Miranda]

Hello
Good to here
Ok it has been a while since I used Ammo lock
But if memory serves.

Ammo lock only locks the Ammonia making it safe for the fish it do's not remove it.
Why is this important
Well since it only locks the ammo and not remove it, when you test for ammo it will still show up on the test, although it is locked and fish safe.

With everything you are adding and removing more then likely you are going threw a new cycle this is highly to be happening since now you have killed and removed the BB and the Algea.
Watch your fish for heavy breathing and red gills
Do small water changes and test for
Ammo then Nitrites then Nitrates
And keep a eye on Phosphates
And don't forget to use declor if water is coming from the tap.

For petes sake quit using so many chem's it is only slowing down the natural cycle of things.

Ruben

 

[milocat2012]

Tested the phosphates, it was at 0. i don't usually test it tat often, wasn't sure what's the levels of phosphates should be in the order for fish to suffer? I know quite a bit about ammo lock, i had to refer to it a little last summer when we expended the pond and i still had ultima 2000 that apparently wasn't big enough, so ammonia level started to rise, fish started to flash and jump, and when daily water changes weren't even getting it down a little i had to refer to ammo lock. it seemed to do miracles: fish calm down right away, and they got thru that couple of weeks ammonia spike just fine with ammo lock, till filters finally caught up and it went down to 0. so now i always keep couple of big bottles on hand just in case of an emergency. it seem to work great. This season i decided to upgrade filtration, but cooler spring weather just drives me crazy i'm already going thru 2nd bottle and just got more bottles of it. i do small water changes now, i use to do close to 40% changes for a few days on the beginning of ammonia spike but didn't seem to do any good for me: the levels didn't even go down a little, so just a waist. I'm sure that my water bill would be huge, so i referred back to the method that work for me last summer (ammo lock). i just monitor fish behavior, when they're calm i don't do anything but at the first sign of flashing or jumping i just add more ammo lock , and they calm down for awhile. don't really see any other choice now. i'm hoping that the weather stabilize and all this beneficial bacteria i keep adding will promote filter to kick in in warmer water temps. as for chemicals, i like i said i don't really add any the only one i'm using is the one i used last summer to keep my waterfalls free of string algae. it never hurt anything in the pond last season, just kept my waterfalls clean. if i didn't use it my it would look like on this attached pictures from 2 years ago, when i had lost battle with string algae (till i found Green Clean stuff) so now since my water is crystal clear all i have left to bring ammonia under control. I don't really feed fish now much, in the beginning i didn't want to stop feeding them as they were recovering from cold winter and after my battle all winter long with "Sleeping sickness" as Dave explained in my other post in winterizing pond section. So several of my fish were sick in the winter (and one of them didn't make it thru) so i was afraid to loose any more fish and started to feed them medicated food as soon as they started to eat. It really help to boost their immune system, and the fish that still showed sign of sickness recovered quickly, but of course as you know it kick out ammonia out of control. Also i wanted to ask if anybody know exactly how to recharge zeolite rocks that i have in my filters. I usually just make the salt water and soak the bags in it for about 30 min then return to the waterfall boxes. I'm not sure if i was doing it right, and hold it long enough in salt water. What should be salt concentration in the order for zeolite to release ammonia, and how long to you have to keep it there to recharge it? Also how often do i need to recharge it? and last how long the zeolite bags are good for and how often to replace them?

 

[Waterbug]

Tested the phosphates, it was at 0. i don't usually test it tat often, wasn't sure what's the levels of phosphates should be in the order for fish to suffer?

That could explain why the algae isn't consuming all the ammonia. Zero phosphate for fish keeping is normally good because it limits algae. However algae is also a bio filter so no algae growth, no ammonia reduction. Keep in mind algae use these chemicals only to produce new cells. They don't consume it in order to stay alive. More like building blocks rather than food.

I wouldn't add lock and do water changes. I'd do one or the other as needed. The concept of adding lock is you add more than needed and as more ammonia is produced it's also locked. But water changes removes that extra lock. A water change throws out safe, locked ammonia, water along with unused lock chemical. First you pay to create the safe water and then you throw it out doesn't make sense to me.

Nothing wrong with using lock except it's complex. You have to measure ammonia precisely, know how much you added and therefore how much remains in the water unused. Keep measuring to know it more is needed. And use the charts to tell toxic from safe.

Without tracking and precise control you're just tossing in some and hoping. Not really what I'd call control of the issue. Testing ammonia and getting a range of 2-4ppm is too wide a range to be useful. You have to find a way to narrow that.

As for all the other chemicals...way more than I can understand or keep track of. I'd need a spreadsheet. So I can't provide any guesses.

 

[milocat2012]

it's been awhile, but just wanted to get a little update. The weather still been staying crazy here: till the end of last week the temperature drops were crazy, was jumping around from close to 80F for couple of days to below 60F every few days, last weekend water temp dropped down to 58F. only since last monday finally kept more consistent, and water now above 70F for almost a week. The ammonia still was over 4 ppm, so had to refer to ammolock at first sign of fish flashing. this spring with this crazy weather the ammolock was the only thing that kept my fish alive (bad this i'm already on 3rd big bottle). I even called Aqua: the manufacturer of Ultima2, and they just confirmed what i already put my guess to: that brand new system can't mature with those temp drops. it has to come to at least 70F and stay there for at least 3 weeks for those filters to have a chance to catch up. This week when i tested everything, i finally saw that ammonia came down to around 3 ppm (most probably all of it is locked with all that ammolock i've been adding) but yesterday for the first time i saw nitrates rising: it's the first indication that filters started to work, as before ammonia was sky hight but nitrates at 0, now nitrites raised to little more then 0.5 so i added more salt to protect the fish. Hopefully with another week or 2 warm weather all of it will come to stable conditions. now i faced another problem with this crazy weather: 3 of my weakest fish, the ones that barely survived the winter all of them came from Hawaii warm climate, just broke down in sores and ulcers on their bodies. 2 of them have huge ulcers (as seeing on the attached pictures) and more smaller ones. Another one has small ulcer on the body and bad case of mouth rot. I couldn't take a picture of that one as didn't want to stress it more. I quarantined them since monday, disinfected the ulcers with potassium and keeping them in medicated water with Nitrofuracin Green, which is mix of Nitrofurazone, Furazolidone and Methlene blue. Razed salinity to 0.5 (but not sure if i should bring it down now?) and applied Medicated, Neomycin-Based Topical Treatment For Fish. Till yesterday didn't really see too much of the improvement, so decided to sedate them, gave them each a shot of Baytril dried them up with the towel and applied topical to dry wounds which stick to them a lot better then when i was doing it with fish flapping around. Now i'll see how they do on monday (don't want to take them out every day not to add more stress). so may have to repeat the procedure again. Anybody would have any other suggestions as of any other treatments for ulcers and mouth rot? All the other fist looks fine now, i'm keeping an eye on them and feeding then medicated food for now. but so far the fish from Hawaii shown to be with very weak immune system and not susceptible to our harder weather conditions, started with being almost near death in the winter, as i barely saved them, and it's continue now. I would think twice now before buying any more fish from warmer climate. the last picture is to the new ammonia test the i got and tested, that i couldn't even read. the colors don't even much to the chart (on the left is total ammonia and the right is free). maybe because all this lock that i've been adding is throw out the result i'm not sure so went back to API test I've been using before​

 

[Fishylove]

Wow nasty ulcers there Did you know at the time you were buying warm climate fish? Jersey gets colder than we do here. Hope they get better for you, looks like you have the ulcers under your thumb, beautiful fish btw!

 

[milocat2012]

Yes it's very nasty ulcers. so far not too much of improvements in healing. Gave them another injections yesterday, so hoping it's going to turn for the better. tomorrow probably will give them the third one. just reduced the salinity to 0,4% as i'm not even sure if salinity is good for ulcers and mouth rot. i took some pictures while treated the fish under sedation: the only picture i couldn't take is the mouth rot on the fish as the camera died on me that moment, so the only picture of kohaku is small ulcer that don't seem getting better, but not getting worse ether. picture of mouth rot is hard to take after fish came back from sedation. maybe i'll take it tomorrow. Yes i knew that the fish i was buying last summer was coming from Hawaii, it's good company: Kodama koi farm located there. they sell very nice healthy fish reasonably priced. I got 5 koi from them last year, they ship overnight and all their fish were beautiful and healthy at the time of arrival, so i thought that koi will adapt then weather will slowly get colder. We ended up having exceptionally and unusual cold winter and weird cold spring this year. and not till the weather got really cold in January i started having problems with this Hawaiian fish: the first on collapsed was kohaku, i brought him in the garage and managed to save him, so he made thru winter after this, next one was tancho Kujyaku, i treated him, first time he came back to life, then collapsed again ended up with some king of sore or ulcer (never seeing anything like this in the winter) last 2 pictures of him and his ulcer from this winter before he died. I felt bad that i couldn't save him. This company has a store hear in NJ and i bought a few fish from their local store which get the same shipments from Hawaii, the prices here are higher here then if you get it from Hawaii but all the fish from local Kodama koi store as well as my old timer koi were fine in the winter and now they're fine as well. they made it thru cold spring and hard times with my filtration just wasn't maturing and doing the work, so the only way i could protect the fish is to consistently add ammo lock to water to keep neutralizing hight ammonia. Finally just yesterday for the first time the ammonia test showed 0 ppm of ammonia, but nitrate is currently at 1 ppm. so i added more salt to protect fish from nitrates. hopefully another few warmer days and constant adding of beneficial bacteria will give my slow maturing system enough boost to eat up the nitrates as well. So i don't know if all this problems happening with fish has to do that they came from warm climate, i'm not sure, but it's just seems too coincidental that all kinds of problems thru winter and spring happened only to Hawaiian fish, i've never for 12 years that i have ponds had any problems in the winter with any fish. so i just guess that they fish from warm climate don't have the Immune system for cold weather.
Thanks for good word, and I sure hope that i can save these sick fish. sure would feel bad loosing them to the addition the one i lost in the winter.

 

[milocat2012]

Hi Everybody, 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 out of the pond, 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? it all clogged up with strings and it created big chunks of media stuck with algae. 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 almost new: i only bought about a year ago and ran it one season. 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. I've never had a problem as big as this year, a had some last winter, but not nearly as bad as this year and, never in the summer, probably because fish eats it in the summer. 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. i always had string stuff on the water fall, which i learn to easily control: just turn off your pump for 30 min and sprinkle the powdered algaecide. Unfortunately for pond walls, it's not usable, as you can't drain your pond to sprinkle it on the walls. And my UV lights only control the floating stuff and don't do anything to strings. 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.So any ideas as how to clean it of the media and also how to control it in the pond would be appreciated.

 

[Big Lou]

I recommend algaecide that is SAFE for both fish and plants. You absolutely MUST follow the manufactures directions.