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| This is a 250 word (approx) summary of a chapter
from my book .
Each chapter or main topic has been summarised in this way. For a complete
list of summaries see the right hand column Concepts:
ammonia, fish, pond, water, poisoning, food, koi, equilibrium,
transforming, nitrification cycle, biofilter, installing, temperature,
alkaline, balance.
Summary:
- The first pollutant to occur in a pond containing fish is a chemical
called ammonia.
- This section delves a little more deeply into ammonia, what it is in
a pond environment and under what circumstances it is really dangerous.
- This sounds crazy - a fish eats food to grow but in doing so sows the
seeds for its own death by poisoning.
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- This is achieved in a lake for example by restricting food supplies,
limiting fish population and ensuring there is a biological balance that
prevents ammonia building up.
- To understand what can happen and to therefore prevent dire
consequences a basic understanding of ammonia chemistry in water helps.
- Ammonium is continuously transforming itself into ammonia and
hydrogen ions in the water and vice versa.
- Changing the situation by changing pH (means the acidity or how
alkaline water is) or temperature for example will disturb the old
equilibrium and create a new one.
- This is another reason for installing an UV light even in the best
koi ponds with excellent biofiltration.
- Gerry Preston who writes superb articles on koi keeping in the UK
magazine "Nishikigoi International" calculated that between 3 and 4% of
the dry food fed to koi becomes ammonia which is secreted by the koi into
the pond water.
- The solution to this potentially disastrous situation of ammonia
poisoning is the installation of a well designed biofilter big enough to
cope with the existing fish density and also the future stock density that
will arise from the fish growing.
- This series of reactions is referred to as the nitrification cycle.
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