Pond water change

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Hey there. I am new to this. Had ducks a long time ago and decided to clean up their old pond and put fish in it. We put a bunch of feeder goldfish in it to start. When it rained last week, it flooded my yard and ran a lot if mud into the pond. No matter how much I filtered it I couldn't get it to clear up. So I caught all the fish put them in buckets drained it and cleaned it and started with fresh water yesterday. Woke up this morning and they are all dead. What did I do wrong?
 

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And welcome to GPF you will get plenty of great advice hear.
Hello and welcome. Did you add a dechlorinator to the water? If you have city water, the chlorine and chloranines are toxic to fish.
I did add dechlorinator. Do you think the water was too cold? It started happening really quite fast. I had used tap originally as well but it sat in the pond for a couple days before I put any fish in it. I am so angry at myself. Poor fishies!
 

TheFishGuy

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I did add dechlorinator. Do you think the water was too cold? It started happening really quite fast. I had used tap originally as well but it sat in the pond for a couple days before I put any fish in it. I am so angry at myself. Poor fishies!
We all learn and grow from our mistakes, especially with ponding.

Since you used a dechlorinator, I am going to guess it was that you reset the cycle of the pond. If you haven't read about the nitrogen cycle yet, start here: https://www.thesprucepets.com/nitrogen-cycle-understanding-1380724

basically when you did a full water change, you killed any and all bacteria that were allowing the nitrogen cycle to go round, causing a buildup of toxic chemicals, and fish death.

It seems a little strange that something like this would happen so fast, did you temperature acclimate the fish before putting them back in the pond?
 

j.w

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1649105872634.gif
@Shannanb74
Could be that you shocked them w/too cold of water if you did not have the water at the same temp as the old water and also the other stuff already mentioned about all that new water they were not used to w/no cycling done to it.
 
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We all learn and grow from our mistakes, especially with ponding.

Since you used a dechlorinator, I am going to guess it was that you reset the cycle of the pond. If you haven't read about the nitrogen cycle yet, start here: https://www.thesprucepets.com/nitrogen-cycle-understanding-1380724

basically when you did a full water change, you killed any and all bacteria that were allowing the nitrogen cycle to go round, causing a buildup of toxic chemicals, and fish death.

It seems a little strange that something like this would happen so fast, did you temperature acclimate the fish before putting them back in the pond?
I did acclimate Then when I 1st put them back in the bottom of the pond but then I let the water run to fill the rest of the pond and I think that I might have put them in shock or something
 
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How long should I wait before adding more fish? Feeder fish are cheap and all but i dont like anything to die.
 
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Being an old duck pond god only knows what you stirred up. did you put old logs or r9cks back in after cleaning
my vote would be temperature shock
 
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How long should I wait before adding more fish? Feeder fish are cheap and all but i dont like anything to die.
That's almost impossible for us to say to many unknown. The size of the is a factor. Is there any chance garden chemicals or lawn fertilizer got in the water ?
 

addy1

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What is the ph of the tap water? Our well is acidic, first fish I put in died very quickly. Ph of 5.6
 
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I need to add some water to my pond... what do I do? Do I add it and then treat it? Or how?
 

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I need to add some water to my pond... what do I do? Do I add it and then treat it? Or how?
What are you treating it for? Chlorine? Does your water have chlorine in it? Do you have fish in there?

If no fish are in there wouldnt worry about adding anything.
 

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