My fish are acting skittish and won't eat after I cleaned the pond.

EAC

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So, I cleaned my pond and removed alot of rocks etc etc from it. This was on Sunday. My fish are acting very skiddish (Hiding) and aren't eating. They would usually start going crazy once I tossed in some pellets. Now, nothing :( .

Do I just need to give them some time to adjust?
 
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Can you describe the cleaning a bit more? You may have seriously disturbed the "ecosystem" which could be affecting them negatively. First things that come to mind would be if you filled the pond with tap water but did not dechlorinate. Or, killed off the "cycle" which could cause high ammonia levels. Or, changed the PH of the water, or the temp of the water. Or, like you said, they may just need a few days.
 

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I power washed all the algae / grime off the waterfall. Then, I drained the pond completely, scrubbed it, rinsed it, vacuumed it, then filled with tap water. Before I added the water, I added dechorinator, anti bacteria and anti algae chemicals. The temp of the tap water was definitely cooler, but I tried to acclimate them as best as possible.

There was also a lilly plant in there that I removed and replaced with a floater. I forgot what it’s called.

What does kill off the cycle mean?

Thanks!
Eric
 

HARO

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Test your water and post the results. You are starting off with a brand new pond!
John
 
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This is "the cycle", in short. Fish poop, pee, and exhale. This causes ammonia. Ammonia is poisonous to fish. After a while, bacteria grow that comsume the ammonia and convert it into nitrite. This is also poisonous to fish. Then another bacteria comes along and converts the nitrite into nitrate. The nitrate is less harmfull to the fish until it builds up into higher concentrations. The way to remove the nitrate in most cases is to do a water change. That is the basic "cycle". Now when you drained and cleaned the pond, you probably killed most of the bacteria. They live on the surfaces of the pond liner, rocks, plants, and in the filter. They love oxygen rich environments as well. So now you have nothing filtering out the poisonous ammonia. Your pond will also probably turn pea soup green for a while, which I would not panic over. I would also not pour anit bacteria or anti algae into the pond. They will actually work against you and the cycle.
 

EAC

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My kit only tests for Ammonia, Nitrate, Nitrite and PH.

Ammonia .50
Nitrate 10
PH 7.6
Nitrite .25

Is this bad?
 

JohnHuff

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Yes, ammonia needs to be 0. You killed all the beneficial bacteria. Do a water change right away and stop feeding the fish. You need to get rid of that ammonia. Not sure what else people might suggest, but I might dump some algae, duckweed or simple plants there right away to suck up the ammonia.
 

fishin4cars

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I am with John, stop feeding and start doing daily water changes, No more than 25% and be sure and use something to neutralize Chlorine,Chloramine (Which ever your water company uses) If your not on well water. Totally cleaning a pond in the middle of the growing season is almost never a good idea, best to do smaller cleanings and wait until the water cools below 50 degrees if your going to do a total clean out. It might be helpful to other to tell us what size pond, fish load, any details you might consider important including what your using for fitration.
 

EAC

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fishin4cars said:
I am with John, stop feeding and start doing daily water changes, No more than 25% and be sure and use something to neutralize Chlorine,Chloramine (Which ever your water company uses) If your not on well water. Totally cleaning a pond in the middle of the growing season is almost never a good idea, best to do smaller cleanings and wait until the water cools below 50 degrees if your going to do a total clean out. It might be helpful to other to tell us what size pond, fish load, any details you might consider important including what your using for fitration.
I'll stop feeding.

Pond is 7.8 x 4 @ 2 feet deep with 25 foot waterfall. So, around 500 gallons.

No filtration.
 

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JohnHuff

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Just do small daily changes as suggested by fishin4cars until your ammonia reads 0. It might be a good idea for you to get a pre-filter or some kind of mechanical filter to filter out solids. What kind of pump do you have? And with a 25 ft waterfall, you might not need a biofilter, I would just add a bunch of gravel or pebbles to it.
 

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