My grandmother's pond

[Buddahcjcc]

Im helping her make her pond. It used to be a spa, but after a fair amount of work, its turning into a fish pond. Its 16-1700 gallons full but she's keeping it a little low as the last couple times she tried it full it turned green on her and cloudy. But then she was trying to use the spa filter as a pond filter. I convinced her to buy a pond pump and thats what we have now. Ive never done a pond before so this is all new to me and neither has she.

We have 5 koi and 5 "fancy goldfish" - one of which you can see in the lower foreground

We had a disease in the pond that made a few fish have red spots on them and by the advice of a guy at PetSmart, bought some TC Tricycline and put four packets in (one packet covers 10 gallons and our pond is 500-800 gallons) and now the pond went from being nice and clear to this:

It doesnt look that bad from the picture but in real life you can barely see the bottom, and it smells weird too. The color os the water is either brown or reddish. The bucket in the back has the pond pump in it, surrounded with quilt batting as suggested on another forum I saw.

We bought a testing kit and I tested it today, and got the following results:

For the wide range PH test it looks like 8.0

Ammonia looks either to be zero or .25

Phosphate looks to be 1.0 or 2.0

And Nitrite seems to be zero

As we have no experience with this; ANY help would be appreciated.

 

[MitchM]

Wecome.

A couple questions:
What did you do to make the spa useable as a pond?
What are you using for water circulation and/or filtering?
Ponds are not meant to be treated with antibiotics. The antibiotics will damage the beneficial bacteria population. Be prepared to do a large water change. Do not add anything else that the pet store gives you at this point.

 

[Buddahcjcc]

What did you do to make the spa useable as a pond?

My grandmother spent a few days scrubbing it and making sure there was no chlorine left over. As I said, neither of us know what we're doing so what SHOULD we have done?

What are you using for water circulation and/or filtering?

A 500 or 1000 gal Pond pump purshased from Lowe's and the filter is the quilt batting that is wrapped around it

 

[MitchM]

Spas have exterior plumbing that needs to be sealed off and emptied, otherwise water can go stagnant and/or animals can crawl in the plumbing and die and cause poor water quality issues.
The best thing would be to empty the spa and put in a liner.
The fish would need to be transferred to a children's pool or something for a few weeks while the new setup with a liner was properly cycled.
You could use the pump with it's quilt batting for a filter in the kiddie pool, depending on how long it has been running for in the spa.
After that, you should set up a waterfall type filter to help clean the spa pond.

 

[Dave 54]

Its a novel approach to a pond this is , well done on your itenginuiuty never would I have thought of that appraoch however Mitch its right all your seals shold be checked to make sure they are up to the job.
If your still getting a problem with greenish brown water you could try a product called cloverleaf

http://www.cascadebitz.com/Cloverleaf-Blanket-Answer-Koi-sc-855.html


I hope this helps you in your novel appraoch to a koi pond it cleared our on in 4 days

Dave

 

[Buddahcjcc]

Spas have exterior plumbing that needs to be sealed off and emptied, otherwise water can go stagnant and/or animals can crawl in the plumbing and die and cause poor water quality issues.
The best thing would be to empty the spa and put in a liner.
The fish would need to be transferred to a children's pool or something for a few weeks while the new setup with a liner was properly cycled.
You could use the pump with it's quilt batting for a filter in the kiddie pool, depending on how long it has been running for in the spa.
After that, you should set up a waterfall type filter to help clean the spa pond.

Trying again, new water, replaced the old stuff

added stress reducer to make it fishy safe

keeping the level below the jet holes so they cant get in until we can figure out a way to close them.

we're trying with the pump we have atm, with the exit into the pond off the back to aerate and get surface motion. I was thinking of putting a two way PVC split from the pump to two tubes so that the water will move around more.

Gotta figure out a way to block off the drain bit so that stagnant water cant get back up, but other than that, they cant get into it, its too small.

Couple weeks in a kiddy pool then put them into the pond? Is there anything we can put into it so as to start the nitrogen cycle I keep reading about? As Ive read this needs things to start it like things that make waste etc

 

[MitchM]

Are those water jet outlets just regular PVC pipe?
If so, you can buy some plugs from a place like Home Depot and silicone them in place.
That included the bottom drain. It has to be sealed off. Even though fish can't get through the strainer, organic debris (fish poop for example) will get in there. You need to drain the spa again, dry out the drain and water outlets, seal them with aquarium safe silicone, using those plugs and let it cure for 24 hurs.
We can save you some money if you let us know what your plans are before you do it, by the way.