Water gardening, pond keeping, 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.
Never switch off your pond pump for more than about 60 minutes if you keep fish - the biofilter is starved of oxygen. For this reason two smaller pond pumps are often a better choice than a single larger pond pump.
The main reason for a biofilter in a pond is NOT to filter the solids out of the water. It is to purify the water by removing offending chemicals. These chemicals are actually produced by the fish themselves by virtue of their normal breathing, eating and toilet behaviour. Biofilters need a continuous supply of oxygen sourced from that dissolved in circulating pond water.
At higher temperatures oxygen concentration in water falls. In high summer this can create serious problems if there is a lot of green algae in the pond.
Do not buy fish food with more than 10% ash in it unless you know why. Read the label. If no label BE CAREFUL of quality.
Gold fish food or koi food bought in stick form is normally money wasted and offers no real benefit to the fish. It is the analysis of the food that is important not the physical shape. Gold fish food or koi food in stick form was developed before pellets could float - this is the reason gold fish food or koi food sticks were invented.
Make sure the delivery pipe from the pond pump is not kinked or is being restricted by a build up of algae inside the pipe. This happen quickly in transparent tubing exposed to sunlight.
To determine an approximate average depth of your gold fish or koi pond whose depth is not constant take a stick and mark it in intervals of say 3 inches with an indelible ink pen.
At 10 different places in the pond insert the stick and record the depths (10 numbers). Add the numbers together and divide by 10. Use this answer as the average depth of the pond.
If your pond is of equal depth and the same cross section then you can very accurately measure the pond volume as follows.
Measure the depth using a tape or stick. Using the pond pump measure how long it takes to fill say a 5 gallons container.
Now pump water out of the pond for say 5 minutes Record the depth after pumping out water
The pond's volume is then calculated as follows:
S = depth of pond in inches or any unit before pumping starts
D = inches or any unit of water pumped out of pond when pumping stops
T1 = time to fill the container
T2 = time pump was run to pump out water
V = volume of container
Volume of pond = (S x V x T2) DIVIDED BY (D x T1)
If container was in gallons then final pond volume is in gallons. If container was in litres then final pond volume is in litres.
It does not matter whether you measure pond depth in inches or any other units.
Must the UV be placed before the biofilter? In theory it does not matter at all but in practice if you have a simple box type filter is must be before the filter. Reasons are:
The UV works under small pressure - water must be forced through it while the biofilter drains under gravity.
In sand filter systems (which I do NOT recommend) the UV light comes after the pond filter because the whole system is under pressure.
Not applicable in many cases but you can also split the flow from your pond pump - part through UV light and part through biofilter.
Use garden pond bottom waste on the compost heap. This organic matter is full of mainly anaerobic bacteria which will catalyse the composting process. Backflushings from the pond filter can be sprayed onto the lawn or garden as a source of nitrogen fertiliser.
A. Use black or opaque pipes in your pond instead of transparent
low cost plastic tubing. Since light cannot penetrate the black
piping the algae growth inside the pipe will be very considerably
reduced. This means less maintenance and also less expenditure on
replacing transparent pipe when it becomes clogged with algae.
Measuring pond volume in USA .... Burt Ballou pointed out
that in USA most homes have a water metre which can be accessed readily.
This makes pond volume measurement simple if you start with an empty system.
Just make sure that while filling the pond nobody uses then toilet,
takes a shower does the washing up etc. All you have to do is then record
the start and finish readings from the metre to get a very accurate
indication of pond volume.
Measuring pond volume using science .. this is worth pointing out
for its simple but brilliant bit of chemistry. Once more I am grateful
to a reader for pointing this out to me. This method depends upon a
pondkeeper using salt in the pond water. By measuring the salt
concentration in the pond water before and after adding a known amount (lbs) of salt to the pond it is possible to calculate the pond volume very accurately and easily assuming the salt hydrometer is also accurate.