Ida
Pond noob
- Joined
- Feb 20, 2022
- Messages
- 29
- Reaction score
- 22
- Hardiness Zone
- 10a
- Country
I’ve only joined about a week ago and already I get the feeling that y’all are a big family with a massive love for ponds and all that includes 
Here is a bit of background and a short story for y’all
About 2 years ago, my hubby and I redid our garden. He loves water features and we wanted something to catch, collect and redirect the water from the waterfall. But we live in South Africa, so mosquitoes are always inviting themselves for a drink. We decided to get a few fishies to help manage the inevitable. Bought 6 beautiful, but tiny Shubunkins for our very tiny (150L) pond at the time. Fast forward a few months, we decide to take out the pebbles at the bottom to give them more space and clean the whole pond while they’re relaxing in a big container… we put them back and 4 hours later they’re all dead, we are devastated! It was an absolute horrible 4 hours, trying to save them, doing fish “CPR” (no I didn’t breathe into their mouths ). And so we learn the VERY hard lesson of NEVER doing a complete water change and ALWAYS treating the water before introducing the fish.
We went to another pond lady who breeds with Koi and imports her Shubies ONLY from Israel… which obviously sounded super fancy to us noobs. Apparently we didn’t know enough at the time and turns out most of our shubies are actually sarassa goldfish/comets. They’re still beautiful so I don’t really mind oh and she told us the males are the ones with long tails and the females have short tails, lol.
A year later we decided to get a bigger pond, since these guys were growing super fast! We were a bit torn between liner and precasted ponds, but in the end we didn’t really have the resources for liner so opted for the precast (fiber glass and ceramic/cement I think).
We kept the fish in a 60L container with their old, small pump overnight to give the water in the new pond time to respond to all the treatments (we did NOT want a repeat of the mass murder the year before). The next morning I woke up to our only, proper Shubie (Odin) presenting with ammoniac poisoning (obviously the pump did not filter well enough even in such a short time). I sprang into action and added pond water to their container after removing some of their dirty water… getting them ready for the (oh so slow) transition ASAP. It was a fine line between not wanting to shock them with the new water and wanting to get them out of their poisonous water. Deep breath of relief when Odin started improving and eventually all of them were swimming happily in their new pond! Took a few days for us to start relaxing completely, but they seemed to be enjoying the new, spacious pond
That was a year ago…
The volume of the pond is a bit tricky to figure out, we rounded it down to about 800L. Here are the pond details:
- approximately 800L/210gal
- 185cm wide, 120cm length, 38cm deep (73”x47”x15”)
- 9 fish currently (7x 3yo adults and 2x 3-4 month old fingerlings)
- goldfish/Shubunkin/comets
- filtration: 25L Grech pressurised biofilter with UV and 6000 L/h or 1500 gal/h pump connected to a 1 meter high waterfall
- we usually do a 10% water change weekly
- water plants: x4 lilies and x2 papyrus in containers (most of the soil has been removed by the fish and we put rocks in to secure the plants in place)
- testing kit: quick test using strips, testing for pH, kH, gH, Cl2, NO3 and NO2
The water lilies seem to be struggling. I added some liquid fertilizer (fish safe) about a month ago and they seem to be improving a little bit, but the algae also really appreciated the boost haha.
We’ve named our fish after warriors, taking their colours and personalities into consideration. We recently lost our warrior princess, Xena, but our other warriors are still looking fighting fit and happy
So that’s me in a nutshell, I’ll add some photos of our pond. Please excuse the paint coming off… between the birds and our cats it never stood a chance. Oh and our cats have only ever shown an interest in the water and lily pads, not the fishies. They keep the bird predators away and our fishies safe.
Tl:dr
New member with lots of noobs mistakes and some trauma
Second batch of goldfish/Shubunkin/comets now living their best lives in a small pond, but proper.
So happy to be here!
Here is a bit of background and a short story for y’all
About 2 years ago, my hubby and I redid our garden. He loves water features and we wanted something to catch, collect and redirect the water from the waterfall. But we live in South Africa, so mosquitoes are always inviting themselves for a drink. We decided to get a few fishies to help manage the inevitable. Bought 6 beautiful, but tiny Shubunkins for our very tiny (150L) pond at the time. Fast forward a few months, we decide to take out the pebbles at the bottom to give them more space and clean the whole pond while they’re relaxing in a big container… we put them back and 4 hours later they’re all dead, we are devastated! It was an absolute horrible 4 hours, trying to save them, doing fish “CPR” (no I didn’t breathe into their mouths ). And so we learn the VERY hard lesson of NEVER doing a complete water change and ALWAYS treating the water before introducing the fish.
We went to another pond lady who breeds with Koi and imports her Shubies ONLY from Israel… which obviously sounded super fancy to us noobs. Apparently we didn’t know enough at the time and turns out most of our shubies are actually sarassa goldfish/comets. They’re still beautiful so I don’t really mind
oh and she told us the males are the ones with long tails and the females have short tails, lol.A year later we decided to get a bigger pond, since these guys were growing super fast! We were a bit torn between liner and precasted ponds, but in the end we didn’t really have the resources for liner so opted for the precast (fiber glass and ceramic/cement I think).
We kept the fish in a 60L container with their old, small pump overnight to give the water in the new pond time to respond to all the treatments (we did NOT want a repeat of the mass murder the year before). The next morning I woke up to our only, proper Shubie (Odin) presenting with ammoniac poisoning (obviously the pump did not filter well enough even in such a short time). I sprang into action and added pond water to their container after removing some of their dirty water… getting them ready for the (oh so slow) transition ASAP. It was a fine line between not wanting to shock them with the new water and wanting to get them out of their poisonous water. Deep breath of relief when Odin started improving and eventually all of them were swimming happily in their new pond! Took a few days for us to start relaxing completely, but they seemed to be enjoying the new, spacious pond
That was a year ago…
The volume of the pond is a bit tricky to figure out, we rounded it down to about 800L. Here are the pond details:
- approximately 800L/210gal
- 185cm wide, 120cm length, 38cm deep (73”x47”x15”)
- 9 fish currently (7x 3yo adults and 2x 3-4 month old fingerlings)
- goldfish/Shubunkin/comets
- filtration: 25L Grech pressurised biofilter with UV and 6000 L/h or 1500 gal/h pump connected to a 1 meter high waterfall
- we usually do a 10% water change weekly
- water plants: x4 lilies and x2 papyrus in containers (most of the soil has been removed by the fish and we put rocks in to secure the plants in place)
- testing kit: quick test using strips, testing for pH, kH, gH, Cl2, NO3 and NO2
The water lilies seem to be struggling. I added some liquid fertilizer (fish safe) about a month ago and they seem to be improving a little bit, but the algae also really appreciated the boost haha.
We’ve named our fish after warriors, taking their colours and personalities into consideration. We recently lost our warrior princess, Xena, but our other warriors are still looking fighting fit and happy
So that’s me in a nutshell, I’ll add some photos of our pond. Please excuse the paint coming off… between the birds and our cats it never stood a chance. Oh and our cats have only ever shown an interest in the water and lily pads, not the fishies. They keep the bird predators away and our fishies safe.
Tl:dr
New member with lots of noobs mistakes and some trauma
Second batch of goldfish/Shubunkin/comets now living their best lives in a small pond, but proper.
So happy to be here!
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