I have not set up the pond yet. I am not quite sure yet when I will have it up and functioning . Hopefully in the next 2-3 weeks hopefully between work demands and weather and doing window replacements. I was curios around what ph I should have in the pond. I will eventually have a few fish, probably gold fish. Thanks for the info and input. Any other help would be appreciated.
@Creativeclover A stable pH is the best pH. This will depend on your source water's alkalinity.
If you have a reliably high alkalinity of around 9 KH or higher, then you do not need to worry about pH too much unless you get a big rain, and, in this case, a calcium carbonate product ((crush oyster shells, etc etc, do a search in the forum here)) in a bog type filter will off set this. If your alkalinity is up to around 14 KH (as mine is), then you are quite lucky and will NEVER have to think about pH ever, even when you have a big string algae or "green water" growth or a massive rain flood event.
Everybody's "stable pH" is different, but, generally, you want it anywhere in the range of 7.2~8.5. As long as it remains steady, not changing much (0.2~0.5) points from morning to evening, then you are fine.
And still... if your pH dips a bit too low due to a heavy rain or an algae attack (be it of the string or "green water" variety), then the above mentioned calcium carbonate product will be fine.
To preempt all concerns, you can use baking soda to go ahead and maintain a 14 KH (pH around 8.5ish) and still be ok, but you need to do more study about how to do this safely when fish are involved and how water changes may cause problems with you.
Just a stable pH... That's all... Don't give any thought to folk that say "you MUST have your pH at 7.6 or 8.5 or whatever" because, for beginners, that is entirely unnecessary... Just stick to a stable pH...
