Flashing because of ammonia?

[kmarcel]

I think the issue is ammonia, which shows between .25 -.50. First noticed flashing Wed last week. Had previously a few days before done a 10% water change, then Sat did a 25%, cleaned mechanical filters, added salt and beneficial bacteria. Last week when I first noticed the flashing added Ammo lock. PH between 7.0-7.5. The funny thing is that I only notice them flashing around 7ish at night. They don't rub against sides of pond and always seem to flash in the same location in the pond, very strange. Some nights it's only one or two different fish that do it. Usually the larger fish, have not noticed my smaller ones doing it. I assume they're more affected by the water conditions.

I have never had flashing before and never (that I'm aware of) had ammonia problems. So I'm wondering what's causing it. Last year, late summer, I expanded the pond from approximately 800 gallons to about 1200. I have two skimmers with mechanical filters, one in the newer section that pumps up to some large rocks and trickles down into pond. The 2nd skimmer goes into a small upper pond via a waterfalls (which has a filter) down a short stream then another waterfalls in to larger section of pond. Also have 2 bubblers, one in each pond. The pond is a figure 8 shape.

I don't think there's a fish load problem as some of my koi are small (lost several to a heron a few years ago) and there are fewer than when I had just the smaller pond due to losing 3 over winter.

There a 3 newer fish in pond but they don't flash and I know the place I got them from is very good about treating for possible parasites before selling.

My questions/concerns are should I use Ammo-lock or another ammonia binder while I'm trying to get the ammonia level down? I had been told by one pond place that it locks the ammonia and I should just stop feeding (which I have), check level and do water changes twice a week if needed and add the beneficial bacteria. She felt added the beneficial bacteria and just let the pond get itself stabilized was better than using an ammonia binder, after all fish flashing are normal. I always thought flashing was not good.

Is it true that Ammo lock or ammonia binders "lock" the ammonia level, which to me indicates that I won't be able to lower the level while I'm treating with it. Does flashing hurt the fish? There are no red streaks and other than the occasional flashing they appear as normal. However, sometimes when they flash they jump right up into the air. That makes me uneasy. Does that go along with the flashing? Also, if it is recommended to use Ammo lock or similar, how often can you use it? How often should I do water changes, clean filters and add the beneficial bacteria?

Sorry so lengthy and so many questions. These fish are stressing me. I thought they were suppose to lower my blood pressure!

 

[crsublette]

Flashing is a warning sign that "something" is irritating and possibly significantly harming the fish. Occasional flashing is fine, but, when it becomes quite frequent, then it is a concern.

Your concerns will be better addressed if asked in the Illness and Disease forum section.


The salt is not helping you. Stop doing the salt.

Personally, I found most of the generic pond store beneficial bacteria products ineffective.


If your water's pH, at dawn and dusk, is between 7.0~7.5, then I do not see how a 0.25~0.50 ppm ammonia reading would be blamed for the flashing. Post#11 in the thread An ammonia question is what I would do to resolve the ammonia.

10~25% water changes are quite small and will not remove much of the ammonia. If you want a water change to have an impact, then slowly do a 40% or more water volume chage over a period of 24 hours. First remove the old water. Then, slowly add the new water over a period of 12~24 hours.

You can do water changes every 24 hours as long as the changes are slowly performed over a period of time.


Ammo-Lock works by converting the ammonia into a more complex form of ammonium, which is still consumed by bacteria. The bacteria will break down the "locking" compound over a matter of a couple days or so. The "locking" compound does not interfere with the microorganisms consumption of the ammonia.

As long as you are following the Ammo-lock instructions, then you will be fine, which state from the Drs. Foster and Smith : "Add 5 ml per 10 US gallons of aquarium water. Continue to add Ammo Lock every 2 days until ammonia is not detected. If after 7 days, ammonia is still present, perform a partial water change, service your biological filter and reduce feeding."

Ammo-Lock is a very good product.

If you are concerned about your test kit possibly returning a false positive of ammonia due to the Ammo-Lock, then you can dose a separate container of water with some Ammonium Hydroxide (that is pure 100% without additives) from a hardware store and do ammonia test in that water. Then, do a 10x dose of Ammo-Lock in that container of water. Wait a hour. Again, test the water for ammonia. If it tests positive and at the same amount as before the Ammo-Lock was dosed, then your ammonia test kit is giving you a false positive. If you are simply following the ammonia binder product's instructions, then you do not even have to worry about false positives.

 

[crsublette]

The funny thing is that I only notice them flashing around 7ish at night. They don't rub against sides of pond and always seem to flash in the same location in the pond, very strange. Some nights it's only one or two different fish that do it.

Kmarcel, if you're curious why I answered the way I did, these statements here are why.

To me, it sounds like the fish are only "occasionally" flashing, which is fine.

Now, if the fish were constantly flashing, that is rubbing their body against something or appear to be rubbing their body on the water surface, from morning through evening or doing it every 20 minutes or so, then this type of flashing behavior would be indicating a parasitic attack.


Never instantly jump to the idea of "salt as a solution". Salt should only be used if the medication recommends you to do it or when salting a quarantine tank if the fish is put into a quarantine tank after being in a stressful water conditions. Salt is mainly used to help calm down the fish by helping the fish's osmoregulatory system, that is essentially "breathing", and to help boost their slime coat so that fungus or bacterial infections does not attack them while the fish is in a weakened state of affairs. I have often mentioned salt to combat high nitrite concerns, but using a calcium chloride product is a safer treatment to combat nitrite since it is the chloride ion that is responsible for boosting fish's nitrite defenses. If you want to learn more, then read the thread What Kind of Salt?. Also, don't bother with the pond store salt products since they are not necessary and can be quite expensive.

Due to other products available nowadays, salt is actually the worst product to use to treat parasitic attacks. However, salt works great on particular bacterial infections if done correctly.

Never use salt in a full pond application. If you do, then, after a 3~4 weeks or sooner depending on concentration, instantly do a couple daily slow major water changes of 80%. Full pond salt applications can be scary due to how these type of applications can actually build up parasites and other notorious critters immunity to the salt. Never keep the pond at a high salinity level; personally, I view anything above 0.10% salinity as high.


Unfortunately, on many internet pond articles, salt is recommended far too easily and far too frequently when it comes to fish flashing.

 

[CometKeith]

Crsublette, great advice. Kmarcel, did you think your pond has cycled yet? My guess is not because of high ammonia. I think by cleaning your filters you are removing any beneficial bacteria that has built up in them. Are they also bio-filters? If you don't have one you should consider getting one so bb has a place to grow. Also I never use chlorinated water to clean anything in my pond because it kills the bb. I agree with crublette that it sounds like your water changes are way too small to effectively reduce the ammonia. I would recommend 15-20% on a constant basis as many day in a row you need to in order to get your ammonia levels to zero. I barely feed until my pond has cycled because of concerns about ammonia. Flashing usually tells you the water quality is poor so I would act quickly.

 

[kmarcel]

Thanks for the helpful information. As far as salt, I have read the pros and cons about using salt. I did buy the less expensive bag from Home Depot the blue bag for water softeners. I belong to a koi club and they recommend that you do a 3% in the spring, which I have never done so I thought given the flashing problem and the fact that I didn't salt that much that it would be good to do more than I usually do. I took a water sample to the pond store and they tested and said it was a little over the 1%. I was doing the salt treatment more so to build their slime coat, as it was explained to me, instead of treating possible parasites.

As far as how often they are flashing is difficult to tell. Over the weekend I can say they seemed pretty calm until I saw 2-3 of them flashing 1-3 times around the early evening time. I try to watch as much as I can while I'm home working in the yard. However, during the week I'm working until 5pm everyday. So it's possible they may flash more than I think. I can say I have never seem them do this until last week so I guess it wouldn't be considered normal behavior for my fish. It did seem that when I put Ammo lock in the pond a few days ago that the flashing slowed down, only for a day or two and then it seemed to pick back up, to which I did a 2nd treatment. Then 2 days later I did the water change, added salt and then the next day (yesterday) the flashing was still happening. My thought is it slowed down after the treatment even if for only 1 or 2 days that it seems likely the ammonia is what's triggering the flashing.

I will get more Ammo lock tomorrow and then do another water change. My only problem with doing such a large water change over a longer period of time is that I would be lowering the water level below the passage-way they have going back and forth in the two ponds. When I expanded the pond, I did so by digging a hole next to the current pond while fish were still in it, then seaming two liners together. Therefore the "bridge or channel" where the fish swim back and forth is only 12" deep. I hate to restrict them to just the one pond while doing a slow water change. It seems that may stress them even more.

 

[kmarcel]

CometKeith, I was also wondering about if my pond has cycled yet. Could it be because I expanded it late last summer that it somewhat has that new pond thing going on? One thing that was odd was in winter I had algae. I know a lot of people can algae in the winter, but I never have. So I'm wondering if the dynamics of my pond is different due to expansion. However, last winter was the first time I used bubblers, normally just use the de-icer.

Currently, I have 2 skimmers, one in each pond with mechanical filters, I assume they are mechanical that sit inside the skimmer box, can be pulled out and cleaned. I will say that I always hose them off and have read that isn't a good way to clean. The past few weeks it seemed as those the water falls were slowing down so we cleaned the filters every week and last week we replaced the media pads thinking that may help. The waterfalls doesn't seem to be slowing down as quickly since then.

I'm a little confused as to what a biological filter is and how would I add to my current set up. Would that mean I need another pump? Both of my pumps sit on shelves (one in each pond). The main pond had a skimmer with a good size pump, but I felt when I expanded, due to the design being a figure 8, I would have some dead spots where the water wouldn't circulate as well and put another pump and filter that sits on the shelf, not quite as large as the original one. Our local pond company worked with me on this expansion as far as advising and said the filtration would be sufficient.

 

[Dave 54]

Kmarcel ponds take time to cycle pateience is the key here your waiting for a spike in both ammonia and nitrites this can take upwards of a few weeks .
Salt should never be used in the pond enviroment and at the moment it isnt helping you any .
Try to keep salt out of the pond infuture and use it only in your QT fasility .
When you talk mechanical filters just what are they on your pond and how big are they , your pond is only 200 gallons bigger than mine and it seems you have a heck of alott going on with mechanical filters and skimmers so I'm wodering if it could be your filtration isnt up to the job even combined as it is ?
Zelolite which I touched on in another thread could be the way forwards for you to have a think about ;-

https://www.gardenpondforum.com/threads/zeolite-do-you-use-it.14629/

We use two sacks one on the pond the other charging then stored away ready for use , how often do you do water changes on your pond ?
We try to get in one a week only a partial and always through a dechlorinator unit then trickled into the pond at a slow rate, it comes about due to cleaning out our vortex to drain .
Maintenance of the pond its filters is a must throughout the year and we clean our filters once in late spring , once in mid summer and lastly in late autumn just prior to the winter period.
We run a sequence of filters a vortex two filters with Japmatting (one with zeolite and brushes on top the other with Lithaqua for Ph and Kh stability with quilt batting over that.
To answer your question as to what is a biological filter , picture if you will a large barrel with an L shaped pipe in it with the vertical arm drilled with small holes (to stop the K1 escaping into your pump) it is then filled with K1,bioballs and bio chips
Add six airstones and set into motion all the K1 bioballs and biochips start to churn around and become tiny factories who's sole job is to create benificial bacteria 24/7, 365 days a year and is basically your ponds power house producing
beneficial bacteria knocking it off producing more etc etc etc .
Our two filters after the vortex have three airstones each supplying air and as I said six in the bio filter supplied by an Airtec 40e airpump , we have another soley for the bottom drain bubbler or spindrifter .
I hope this helps with your questions

Dave

 

[kmarcel]

Dave, thanks for all the helpful info. I have to say you pond has much more sophisticated filtration/equipment than mine and your knowledge of all this surpasses mine as well. So much of what you are describing is hard for me to understand, Zeolite, vortex, japmatting, etc.

A question regarding your first statement about being patient. Do you recommend that I use Ammo lock in the meantime?

I do have a stream about 4 feet long that I will get some gravel to add to. Right now the stones are larger pebbles and maybe they are not filtering as good as with gravel. Are Ammo rocks similar to the bio-chips you are referring to? I know they have them at our local pond store. Perhaps I should put some in the stream or maybe in the upper very small pond (less than 100 gallons) that flows into the stream?

 

[crsublette]

I belong to a koi club and they recommend that you do a 3% in the spring, which I have never done so I thought given the flashing problem and the fact that I didn't salt that much that it would be good to do more than I usually do. I took a water sample to the pond store and they tested and said it was a little over the 1%. I was doing the salt treatment more so to build their slime coat, as it was explained to me, instead of treating possible parasites.

I hope you meant 0.10% or that the koi club meant 0.30%, as is explained in post#27 of the thread Salt?. Also, a salinity of 0.30% will have zero impact on parasites except for maybe Ich. If you want to build up their slime coat, then anything around 0.10~0.25% is better, but I do not think your situation warrants this.

1% salinity, that is 10ppt salinity, is incredibly high for freshwater fish and should only be used for short durations, such as just an hour bath or no longer than 2 days. A 3% salinity, that is 30ppt salinity, would kill freshwater fish if done for longer than a 10~30 minute bath dip. Freshwater fish can tolerate a 0.60~0.80% salinity for only around 1~2 weeks until significant stress starts causing damage due to the the salinity. Salt is often the only practice used in the aquaponic hobby since other pond/aquarium chemicals are carcinogenic meaning the products can not be used for edible food fish/plants. A 0.60~0.80% salinity for only around 1~2 weeks is common practice in the aquaponic hobby to solve most bacterial/parasitic/fungal problems, but their water tank environment is quite different from our pond environment.

If the salinity is too high, then the odd behavior, that could be mistaken as flashing, could be due to staying in the incredibly high 1% salinity for too long.

 

[kmarcel]

crsublette, I hope I'm not ODing my fish on salt! I did mean .30%. I took a water sample to the pond store and it tested at .14% (I believe). She said it was a little high being over the .10%, but not too bad. I did this on Sat. I will not be able to do any water changes until Wed evening at best. I know the people in my koi club (which I just recently joined) do the .30% in the spring. and do weekly water changes.

The flashing did start before I added the salt. It started last week around Wed. I did the salt on Sat.

 

[dieselplower]

It's June. The pond should be "cycled" by now. But you have to ask yourself, do you have enough flow to the filters? Do your filters filter purely mechanically, or are they performing biofiltration as well? And if they are, is there enough surface area and enough oxygen in the biofilters for the bacteria to grow to a point where they can handle the ammonia etc load? I do not use any product in my pond. It is about 1600 gallons with a 1300 gph pond. My two filters are large buckets of gravel and I have about 10 potted plants in there. My readings are always 0. I have about 20 goldfish and 2 koi.

 

[kmarcel]

dieselplower, I don't have any biofiltration, which I am learning. I have 2 pumps with mechanical filters, plus a waterfall filter that goes into small upper pond. I don't believe there is enough room in the skimmers to put any biological filtration. I may be all wrong on my understanding of the biological filtration, as you can read in the earlier reply to Dave. I do have a stream, which I will add gravel to, right now it's just small pebbles. I also was advised at the pond store that I could put ammo rocks in the stream or in my upper pond which is very small maybe 50 gallons that flows into the stream and then in the main pond. Would be all be considered biofiltration? This is what I'm trying to get answers to. I think my need is that my filtration is not good enough and I'm trying to figure out how I could improve without doing a lot of rework/expense in my current pond set up.

 

[Dave 54]

crsublette, I hope I'm not ODing my fish on salt! I did mean .30%. I took a water sample to the pond store and it tested at .14% (I believe). She said it was a little high being over the .10%, but not too bad. I did this on Sat. I will not be able to do any water changes until Wed evening at best. I know the people in my koi club (which I just recently joined) do the .30% in the spring. and do weekly water changes.

The flashing did start before I added the salt. It started last week around Wed. I did the salt on Sat.

Charles is saying ponds and salts dont mix it shouldnt be in there full stop for one you cant use formalin with it, formalin and Malachite make up a treatment for certain parasites and two koi are not marine fish so salt is in actual fact foreign to them
As Charles states:-
" 1% salinity, that is 10ppt salinity, is incredibly high for freshwater fish and should only be used for short durations, such as just an hour bath or no longer than 2 days. A 3% salinity, that is 30ppt salinity, would kill freshwater fish if done for longer than a 10~30 minute bath dip. Freshwater fish can tolerate a 0.60~0.80% salinity for only around 1~2 weeks until significant stress starts causing damage due to the the salinity. Salt is often the only practice used in the aquaponic hobby since other pond/aquarium chemicals are carcinogenic meaning the products can not be used for edible food fish/plants. A 0.60~0.80% salinity for only around 1~2 weeks is common practice in the aquaponic hobby to solve most bacterial/parasitic/fungal problems, but their water tank environment is quite different from our pond environment."
So I would rethink your whole approach to using salt using it only as a short term bath or in your QT fasility as I've already said.
What filters do you have on your pond by the way ?

 

[kmarcel]

Dave, I have 2 skimmers with mechanical filters. Also another mechanical filter with the waterfalls.
My reply to your earlier post:
I do have a stream about 4 feet long that I will get some gravel to add to. Right now the stones are larger pebbles and maybe they are not filtering as good as with gravel. Are Ammo rocks similar to the bio-chips you are referring to? I know they have them at our local pond store. Perhaps I should put some in the stream or maybe in the upper very small pond (less than 100 gallons) that flows into the stream?

I would really like to improve my filtration without revamping my current set up. Will doing what I mention above make a difference and is this considered biofiltration????

 

[dieselplower]

Any time you add well oxygenated surface area, you are adding biofiltration. This could be a waterfall, stream, or a bucket full of bioballs or other material like sponges, lava rock, cut up straws etc that water is poured over and drains fast enough that the material is not fully submerged in water. I really dont think adding gravel to a stream will do much for biofiltration.