Cold water fish wanted

[MARY POPPINS]

What wonderful advise from Chez2, certainly knows his stuff, and slmguy ask again when the time is right and I will be able to help, mind I tried to get some out last year and I couldn't catch them, bet the children are realy looking forward to it.

[slmguy]

Thanks very much, they are eager to get going, lol!

 

I will message you in a month if that's okay.

 

Thank you!

[MARY POPPINS]

Could I just ask a question of Chez, we have some quite large fish in one of the ponds golden orfe and ghost koi, weve never had an air stone, but have a waterfall, and a frog that spurts water, would you still recommend an air stone, and what kind, also we leave the waterfall running all winter would the air stone do instead

Edited March 3, 2015 by MARY POPPINS

[Chez2]

LOL I'm a woman not a bloke. Once it warms up I leave the airstone on 24/7. You never know when the temperature is going to shoot up or a storm occur. We got caught out early summer but it was a low pressure storm. We had removed a lot of fish but left the large ones.

 

You aren't supposed to leave the filter running all winter to allow the pond to get warm in winter at the bottom (stratify) but we leave it in all year. We will replace the uv bulb in a month or so. We have an oversized filter and have the outfall raised so it aerates the water as it falls back in to the pond. It's hard to calculate to fish number and size to pond ratio.

 

We have several air stones in our pond.

 

Try running the net under the fish from behind or two people with nets. I don't think they can see well under themselves or behind.

Edited March 3, 2015 by Chez2
Phone predictive text typos grrrrr

[MARY POPPINS]

Thankyou, I am so sorry I called you a he, so it will be ok to turn everything off, I worry about the big fish needing the water to be clean and filtered, the one in the other pond are only small gold fish but I leave that running as well, shows what I know, having said that the big fish are at least twelve years old, so they probably used to it by now

[Chez2]

Try test strips to monitor ammonia and nitrate in the water. Make sure there is no decaying vegetation to deplete the oxygen in winter. Our fish were about twelve years old when they died. It was just insufficient oxygen. We had given away a lot of fish and didn't think we had so many large fish for the pond volume. I have tested dissolved oxygen with a probe and chemically by titration but never in my pond.

 

Chez is a nick name for people called Cheryl. It's not automatic that my user name refers to my name.

[WappyDappy]

Hi. I am getting rid of my pond and have loads of fish of all colours and sizes if you are still interested. Just let me know.

[slmguy]

Hi. That would be amazing. I don't have any fish yet for the home and the kids are waiting and asking everyday, lol. I would be able to collect whenever. How much would you be asking for them as I only have a small pot of funding that the children raised at the community festival to set up the garden. Thanks for letting me know about this. Danny

[WappyDappy]

Hi Danny. You can collect as soon as poss. They are yours for free. Hope they will give some pleasure to the kids. Heather.