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Pond Water Care and Filtration
An effective biological filtration system is the key to maintaining healthy water Without it, the pond will quickly become uninhabitable, due to the build up of toxins and other harmful bacteria..
Establishing Good Water Quality
There are two ways of initially maturing a filtration system.
The first is a very gradual build up of fish stocks to balance your pond water, combined with daily testing and regular pond water changes to dilute any toxins.
However, there are disadvantages to this method, firstly it is time consuming because on each occasion pond fish are added the balance of good bacteria and bad bacteria within the pond filtration system is lost, resulting in rises in ammonia and nitrite until the good bacteria in your pond filtration system catches up.
This can believe it or not even or not happen in established ponds if for example the feeding rate or a higher protein food is adopted.
Secondly it is unfair for the fish to be present while there are harmful toxins in the pondwater, which is unavoidable using this method.
The alternative way of maturing the pond filtration and pond water required little more then attention to detail and care, but is much safer to the fish and even less time consuming, however, you must be willing to invest..
*Tap water Dechlorinator, and a water clarifier. These will remove harmful metals and other common contaminants.* Chloramine and Chlorine are lethal to filter bacteria.
You must also invest in a good quality and reliable *test kit* for PH ammonia and nitrite and preferably for oxygen levels.
You should have the filter and aeration system up and running, but leave the UV clarifier switched off. Next Insure the pond water PH is between 7.2 and 7.9, and there are no obviously contaminants in the pond water i.e. lime from untreated water, introduce the fish in the usual way (floating in bags until temperature is equalised *). You then add to your filtration system live bacteria (you can acquire this by taking a water sample, or filter foam out of another “healthy” matured garden pond filtration system, this will begin the maturation process within your own ponds filtration.
Whilst this is of great help it is no substitute to time and care. You should see this method as seeding the biomass, rather then establishing it in one swoop.
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