Fish health?

[Jhn]

High nitrites is due to lack of bacteria population to convert the available nitrites into nitrates. If your biological filter is not functioning properly you should have an ammonia reading as well.

If the reading is correct fish/life in your pond is creating more waste than can be continent down into motorized/nitrates.

 

[420benz]

Since fish waste seems to lead to ammonia wouldn't vacuuming the bottom every now and then resolve this problem?

 

[mrsclem]

Removing the debris from bottom of pond will help with water quality but not necessarily ammonia. Better to cut back on feeding and increase filtration. Never see a layer of fish poo on pond bottom.

 

[420benz]

[Never see a layer of fish poo on pond bottom.]
How does one do that with out vacuuming it out?

 

[mrsclem]

You can use a net to scoop out leaves etc from bottom.

 

[addy1]

My plant bog sucks any excess nutrients out of the pond. The fish poo, the plant matter is just gone. I have not netted the bottom of my pond in years, the last few times I tried to remove stuff there was nothing to remove. This is a uncleaned bottom of a pond you can see the trap door snails, a bit of hornwort ow just spilled kitty liter and pea gravel.

 

[Lisak1]

How does one do that with out vacuuming it out?

If you can see a layer of fish poop on the bottom of your pond, you have too many fish. In 8 years of ponding I've NEVER seen fish poop in the pond. AT ALL. It should break down quickly . Now if we're talking leaves or other organic debris, then a pool net is my favorite tool.

 

[Gavin Adcock]

I've not got an ammonia reading on the test kit. Might have to buy one... Note that I don't feed the fish; cutting back on food isn't an option.

I replaced 30% of the water by siphoning it out with a hose pipe, and used the siphon to scoop out as much junk/poo as I could. The second strip test showed improved water quality, so this is probably my fix: regular water checks and maybe periodic water changes. Time will tell how good/stable the water quality is. The debris I'm sucking out appears to be very fine brown silt - it can be partially removed with a fine net but is so fine that it goes into suspension in the water when disturbed and then resettles - not sure what this "silt" is.

Spending an hour slowly siphoning water did give me some quality observation time, and what I can say is that the fish have definitely grown. My observation above of "20 fish at 5cm" should be revised to "20 fish at 10cm", the biggest one is probably 20cm. So maybe "overstocking" is the basic issue.

 

[Lisak1]

The debris I'm sucking out appears to be very fine brown silt - it can be partially removed with a fine net but is so fine that it goes into suspension in the water when disturbed and then resettles - not sure what this "silt" is.

Probably just organic material that's broken down over time. Vacuuming it out is one option; stirring it up from time to time can help too as it gets it back into the water column where your filter can deal with it.