Water gardening pond pumps backyard waterfall

Pondkeeper's How to...

Water gardening landscaping information tips and tricks
Knowing the many tips and tricks associated with water gardening can make a big difference to the enjoyment you get out of your pond.

Many people use salt in their ponds. I do not recommend it but the reason is to help prevent bacterial diseases. It is important not to overdose and if the intent is to remove infection from individual fish then rather place the fish in another small temporary pond loaded with salt for a few minutes. Use about 2 lbs per 20 US gallons of pond water as a general treatment. As a short term soaking to treat individual fish use about 3 times as much salt as above.

Adding pond start bacterial mixtures can do no harm especially at this time of year. I am not too sure they do any good although some people swear by them.

Any pond pump with a guarantee of less than 2 years is probably not suited to most pond environments. Short term guarantees indicate lack of product confidence in difficult environments such as ponds. For safety sake use pumps with the longest possible cable and avoid joining wires if you can. It is always best to wire a pump directly into the earth leakage system of the house rather than depend upon a plug and socket. If you do join wires outdoors use waterproof cable connectors.

Many gold fish are born black and not gold ... they seem to appear from nowhere when they are about 1 inch long. In fact they have been hiding from the larger fish who would have eaten them along with many others that did not survive hatching from the ova. Because they are
black they can be difficult for us to see. Gradually they start turning gold until they do become little goldfish - what a delight they are too. All your own work at that.

Do not feed more food than what you fish can eat in about 5 minutes. Remember your fish can survive almost indefinitely without food from you. Any excess food should be removed ... there even devices sold that confine
the food to an area to enable excess to be removed.

As water temperatures increase the appetites of fish increase and the oxygen holding capacity of water decreases. Getting the balance right
between feeding and overfeeding is important. If you find your fish gasping at the surface and are not sure why start changing portions of the water immediately ... ammonia is the likely cause especially early in the season when you may have overfed and the biofilter is not yet working efficiently.Stop feeding.

Make access to your biofilter easy. If there is a risk
of it overflowing and emptying the pond in the process then try to ensure the overflowing water would find its way back into the pond. This risk is real for most biofilters - if the outlet from the biofilter blocks then the pump will cause the water to overflow through the lid.

If you are installing a new pond and arranging for a supply of electricity to it then do add any extra power point for possible future use.

Avoid spreading fertilisers around the pond area and do your best to prevent water run-off from the garden into the pond. This is often the source of high phosphate content in a pond and the cause of bad algae problems

Brushes in biofilters. Ask yourself why do you use brushes? Do you really need them ... possibly not. They do add to the cost without creating a major benefit in most small biofilters. Brushes in off the shelf conventional biofilters have such big gaps in them the only purpose they can serve is to remove long stands such as twigs, lengths of algae etc. For this purpose they are obviously fine .... is this what you want to achieve? For any other reason they are unsuitable. They don't do any harm ... they just make you poorer.

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Pond water gardening