Hello, My name is Joe and I have recently just moved in to a house which has a large pond with koi and goldfish. The owners left no instructions whatsoever on feeding the fish or maintaining the pond, all I managed to get after continual questioning was that they are fed a hand full of dry dog food every other day!! I am quickly starting to realise that this is not good
I have looked at the filter that I believe is gravity fed and it doesn't seem to be doing its job that well, I have attached pics of the set up and just need some advise on what I need to do to get the water cleaner and how the filter box media should be set up, doesn't look like its doing anything!? Seem to get a lot of foaming, especially in the mornings.
From what I can see the pond has 6 large Koi (up to 2ft long!) and about 50 goldfish!! which I already know is far to many.....but what do I do with the ones I can keep???
Any info will be greatly appreciated!
Cheers
from what I can see, your filter is not gravity fed, but rather, your waterfall is. This means you have a pump, probably a submersible. The filter area shows brushes and different chambers. This is more or less a mechanical filter, though if you have any biomedia (plastic balls, pieces, ribbons, lava rock) in any of those chambers, that is your bio filtration. If you're serious about cleaning your pond up and don't want to deal with this type of filter (usually requires regular maintenance of some kind and is not as efficient as what I'm going to suggest), consider putting in a bog (upflow wetland filtration) as it'll give you a lot more time to enjoy and a lot less labor maintaining it. Search for 'bog' here and you'll see many threads to help you learn. See if this interests you--there are many testimonials, including myself.
Agree with adding more plants; think floating types like water hyacinth and water lettuce. But if you do, watch to see if your fish (the koi, primarily) start eating the roots. If so, you can get/make floating nets that will protect the plants. You want this type as they directly filter the water column and outcompete the free floating algae which turns the pond solid green and doesn't add to your enjoyment (though the fish don't mind at all).
The string I see in your pics is to keep flying predators away from your pond.
The once pic of the tube-like-thing is a UV light, which is used to kill the free floating algae I mentioned above. Knowing you have that means the previous owner didn't depend on plants to help the pond. If you go 'bog', you'll not need the light anymore. You won't need the brushes or filter box, either, and your whole setup will be esthetically more pleasing, imo.
I don't think you're in any trouble re the many goldfish and few larger koi; if you get your filtration up to snuff, you'll be fine. I wouldn't add any more, though.
Feeding; don't overfeed as this is probably the number one cause of an unbalanced pond. I feed once a day, maybe, and for as little as 'one handful' until I see they've all got something in their mouths. That's it. The fish will feed on the good algae growing on anything under the water.
Water lilies are nice to see and provide needed shade in the summer but are not the best re filtering the water. There's better types, as I noted above. You can also get marginals and work them into the sides of your pond by either creating shelves or hanging pots from wires/string from the sides. Marginals don't like their crowns covered in water, or very shallowly will be okay. If you go bog, you'll get a lot of the necessary plants we talk about here.
Okay, hope this helps!
