Water quality question?

[capewind]

As with anything, there are purists with everything. Capewind, if ya were to ask these guys for advice, then prepare your self since there is zero grey area with any of them, which is not very helpful unless you want to be involved into the hobby to that extent.

I am not worried about anyone being a purist, and I dont even find those type of views offensive. I've been involved in the dog world for more than 20 years, and have met all kinds. My personal opinion is most people are not "wrong" we are just all at different places on the "learning curve". Different experiences will lead to different views. What is important to me, is no matter where we all are on that learning curve, is we share our knowledge, and leave the person asking the questions in a place to form their own, informed, opinions

 

[capewind]

According to Dr. Johnson's .5 in per 10 gallon rule of thumb, that is a very light fish load. You'll get all sorts of opinions on this though. I think a bog will work fine for ya ... until your fish reproduces to double that population. Ya should think about some natural population controls or look into making a good bio-filter and mechanical filters or feed them less.

I can never remember what the different sites say due to the varying opinions, so the basic rule I am trying to follow is 1000 gallon minimum to have ANY koi, plus 100 gallons per fish. It may not be a perfect formula, but it should keep me somewhat in check from keeping too many. I also try to tell myself that I only have 6500 gallons to work with, and disregard the 2500 gallons of water in the connected bog. Since the bog hasnt yet been completely filled with gravel, we did decide to move all the comets up to the bog (they are looking for a new home, tired of catching comet babies LOL). The fish are all obviously happy right now, as they keep spawning (and have 3 pools going for different sizes LOL).

 

[crsublette]

Yeah, there ya go. I have read that foam mainly appears in the morning since tends to be more humid in the morning versus the afternoon.

My understanding ya mainly will register phosphate when there is a good amount of plant decay occuring. Also, plants eat up this phosphate so ya probably will never register much phosphate unless there is chemical runoff or a high volume of plant decay.

I also dont really believe in water changes unless there is a problem.

Welp, ya got flower beds or vegetable gardens or water your trees?? My water and soil here is very alkaline, that is tough on plants around here. I am using my watergarden to soften the water a bit, add some nutrients, then use this water to water just my trees for now until I improve it a bit to water my xericscape and vegetable gardens. Heck, gonna use water anyways, might as well come out of my watergarden. Heh, we don't get much rain here, actually have to water trees around here. Be careful when ya do water changes, depending on how ya do them, it can cause a pH swing that could stress your fish and possibly introduce other stuffs.

 

[capewind]

Welp, ya got flower beds or vegetable gardens or water your trees?? My water and soil here is very alkaline, that is tough on plants around here. I am using my watergarden to soften the water a bit, add some nutrients, then use this water to water just my trees for now until I improve it a bit to water my xericscape and vegetable gardens.

When the basement pond gets its water change, some of that water does make it to some of the veggies/flowers, as do the buckets of water from cleaning the filters (cleaned in pond water), but that's about it.

 

[addy1]

Have ya kept any of that research? After all that work, I would have kept some documentation for future reference. I would love to read it. Everything I have read has been in regards to the usual watergarden person who enjoys it, who might sell a few koi out of them, instead of big koi farm businesses. I know they're out there, I just haven't come across them since I am still learning all sorts of stuff.

Let me fire up one of my back up computers and see if it is there, the lappy I was using then did a black death lost a lot of info. I will dig through my files and see also.