Water Treatments |
| STRING ALGAE Outside of UV lights, there isn't much you can do. Here are the options you have. I only use my UV lights in the summer; in winter, no algae, why waste electricity and the life of the light bulb? A. Test your phosphates, if it is over 1.0, you can use a phosphate absorber. I use Baraclear, http://www.aquaticeco.com/index.cfm...id/1510/cid/397. I saw Phos-X at petsmart. Algae needs phosphates to survive. I was not able to get my phosphates below 0.5ppm. But that seems to be good enough. Phosphate absorbers will take some time to starve the algae, and it isn't a complete kill. B. Algecides. You need to know the exact gallonage of your pond if you want to use algecides. You can kill your fish if you use too much algecide. You also have to aerate your pond a lot. I have to admit that I use algecides in my tank. My tap water comes with 0.5ppm phosphates to reduce buildup in the pipes. I don't have a uv setup on my tank, so I have to use algecides once every other month. Algecides are a complete kill off of algae and only takes 24 hours. But you have to use it more often if you don't have some phosphate control C. Blackout. I have not done this, but I heard that if you cover your pond from the sunlight for a week, then that should kill off the algae. Remove plants first, blackout will kill your pond plants. Again, without phosphate control, you will need to do this more often. D. Plecostemus. I throw a tiny, tiny plecostemus (<1")in at the beginning of summer. It eats all the string algae. I pull it out in the fall when it is 12" long and give/sell/trade it. Plec will die in water below 60oF. I have a 400 gallon pond. Others will disagree with this because plecostemus can suck slime off of the koi and goldfish. But I have never had this problem. Plecs I have seem to prefer algae to fish slime. Plecs will do no good for pea soup algae. E. Add lots and lots of plants to out eat the algae's food. The problem with this is that, if your koi are like mine, the buggers will eat the plant, roots and all. Make sure you quarantine your plant in a bucket with an aerator and kill off parasites with some bleach. F. Stop feeding your fish for a few days and they will eat the algae. Or feed your fish less. This doesn't always work because the algae may grow faster than the fish can eat. One other note, bluegreen algae is a cyanobacteria, not an algae, and options ABCDEF, and uv lights will not help remove it. Sludge Away I hear does. I did not use Sludge Away. I was able to remove my bluegreen algae with 0.3% salt. Others were not successful with salt. Bluegreen algae looks like dark green jello and is squishy. I call it jello aglae. So, there you have it. Other will have other opinions. You have to decide what is best for you. Letitia |
| Cold Water Ecology and Magic Numbers by Rec Carlson http://mywebpages.comcast.net/recarlso/ As the water temperature at mid-depth of the pond begins to drop and hold at lower readings, we need to pay special attention to what is happening to the ecology of our ponds. The first magic number we need to look for is 62 degrees F. At 62 degrees, the activity of the nitrosomonas bacteria begins to reduce significantly. The effect of this, of course, is a reduced ability for the filter system to manage the conversion of ammonia to nitrites, which is the role of the nitrosomonas bacteria. To offset this, we can reduce the amount of high protein feed offered and mix our normal feed with a lower protein or wheat germ food. The reduction of protein lowers the ammonia output by the fish (see below). Also at 62 degrees, we see a significant dip in the koi’s immune system’s ability to fight off bacterial invasions. This is where your fish start becoming increasingly vulnerable to ulcer and other bacterial infections. If your fish are strong and you have cleaned your pond well, you should not have problems. The next important temperature mark is 55 degrees F. At 55 degrees, the nitrifying bacteria in our filters begin to die off as well, although they will not be completely gone until about 42 degrees F. The effect of this is that our filters begin to loose the ability to eliminate nitrites. Left unattended, we are creating significant water quality problems. So, we need to take some definitive actions. First, we need to change the diets of our fish to a food with lower protein content. Normal summer-type koi feed has protein levels in the range of 35-40% (or higher) depending on the type of food used. For colder water feeding, we need to switch to a food with a lower protein content, somewhere in the range of 30-32%. The reason? It is protein content in food that is a major contributor to ammonia production by the fish. By lowering the protein levels in the food, we thereby lower the ammonia output. It is important to note that 65% of the ammonia of the fish is not affected by feeding as it is a result of normal respiration. Thus it is important to make sure we control the 35% that we can. Summary by Letitia: |