Word of advice for pond owners!

[Anthony]

Products claiming to restore balance to the pond to get rid of Blanket Weed simply don't work.  I've tried several different treatments over the past 10 or so months (Intrepet, Waterlife etc.) and none have come close to working.  In fact far be it from actually reducing Blanket Weed in the pond, there has been a noticeable increase whilst undergoing the said treatments.

So my advice would be to save your money fellow pondies!

Tony

[Margaret]

Hi Tony.The only thing i can say to this is that there is obviously something making your water remain hard and that is why they are not working.I had problems with my first pond when i had lime and sand stone rocks around the edge.When i replaced them with granite rocks,it improved the amount of blanketweed immensely.i found that the pond balance from interpet worked as well as anything when there was an upturn in the blanketweed.Do have plenty of plants.The water cress should help too if you have got round to it yet.And maybe the fact the orfe have not been eating all their food won't have helped.Pond balance to limit the algae problems is quite hard to achieve at times,but it does come,honestly!

By the way ,in answer to your question earlier,yes I think it would be a good idea to put a couple of your bolder fish in with the orfe.

[Anthony]

Thanks Margaret,

Having as much time on my hands as I have currently,   I've resorted to the old method; namely pulling it out by hand (or stick as the case was!).  I've had to remove the Parrots Feather completely now as this had become a tangled floatilla for the BW.  I've put it in a separate tub and managed to untangle the BW which seemed to be smothering it.  I'll be putting this back into the pond in the next few days when I have replanted after the arrival of my hessian sacking.  (ordered this from a company on-line - DTBrown several weeks ago and it still hasn't arrived)  You'll be pleased to know that the half bucket full or so of BW that I pulled out of the pond has been put to good use in bunging up the gaps in the waterfall where the water was escaping underneath where I wanted it to go!!  So for the time being I have had the last laugh with it  

I've put a couple of the bolder fish from the top into the bottom and instead of making the Orfes bolder themselves the fish I put in have now become shy and timid, and like the orfe, more worryingly they have stopped feeding!  I'm really at a loss as to what the problem is with the bottom pond - Fish that seem perfectly healthy, lively and friendly in the top, turn into shy, timid  ones in the bottom - The majority of the fatalities (90%) I have had over the past 12 months have come from the bottom and despite the temp having been 10 degrees for the past 2/3 weeks I have not seen any of them feeding - This is totally the opposite as in the top where they have been eating everything put before them for several weeks.  The water is the same in every way, (it should be it's the same water) temp, ph, nitrate levels etc.  can't think of anything else it can be and not sure what to do next!!

Any ideas welcome!

thanks

Tony

[Margaret]

Tony,you really have me stumped on this one.The fish are obviously stressed for some reason in the bottom pond so there must be something different about it.Something that the water tests would not show up.Do they have enough oxygen,ie from a fountain or the waterfall?Is the pump in the bottom of the pond ,whereas it is not in the top section obviously.Could it be noisy or vibrating enough to stress them.Think again about everything that is different ,no matter how small.Moving your fish down has proved that something is not right.I would move as many fish up to the top as you can and see if they improve.

Do let me know,I am intrigued by this!

[Anthony]

Thanks Margaret,

The pump/fountain is in the bottom pond but to the naked ear it doesn't appear to be overly noisy (the fish may think different).  It's an "Otter Maximus 1500" made by Trident, and having searched the net for reviews of it, it would appear to a reasonable pump.  Does anyone know different?

The only other thing I can think off that is different is that I have a rock stone/light which peers directly into the bottom pond and I wondered if the fish thought this might look like a giant eye!!  (stop laughing!!!!)  I very rarely switch the lights on but I guess even in the day it could look quite menacing to a fish. (long shot I know!!)

I was thinking of relocating all the fish into the top section but yesterday noticed that one of the Orfe looked like it had a fungus infection round it's mouth.  I've started treating the pond with "Interpet fungus and bacteria". This is a five day course. I'll have a think about re-locating the fish again after finishing the treatment and depending on the state of the infected fish and the others.

Thanks again and i'll keep you informed

tony