Be Excellent To Each Other

So, we have one and not much idea about what to do with it. There are eight goldfish in it, and I believe we are not supposed to feed them when it goes below 10C. We have what I believe is a UV filter and I can download the pdf instructions for that, so not too concerned. But other than that, is there anything else we should know or be doing?

Swimming with them to prevent loneliness.

Aww, that would be lovely Dave, you would make their pond bigger!

Only one?

They pretty much look after themselves once they're established, just take out dead leaves and things that fall in there and remove anything that starts over-growing, if the water stops flowing well then the pump filter is probably blocked. We had some koi in ours but they got too big so we sold them and now there's a nice community of frogs in there.

I was thinking more Joans.
Ice baths are all the rage these days.

Have you got four giant dog turds in the garden though?

At this time of year, you should have a look at the pond pump systems and clean out the filter. Also, you mentioned a UV filter, in mine, there is a bulb that does this and its always popped by early February so if you have similar then look at changing that, any Maidenhead Aquatics shop will have the bulbs.

Your fish look good and as mentioned when established will look after themselves, I have food as well and chuck a handful in a couple of times a week.

At this time of year, I can't tell from your picture what aquatic plants you might have in there, the pond does look very open so maybe think of a rock formation the fish can hide under to avoid the Heron? I've had my pond cleaned out twice by our local one.

Nice natural looking pond

Thanks Markg and Asfish, that makes me feel a bit better.

I had done some reading around, but it felt really wrong to not be feeding them!

BREXIT MEANS BREXIT

Beware Paul McCartneys.

You'll be alright if you ALL... STAND... TOGETHER!

Our pond has newts and dragonfly larvae in it. It's awesome.

We should fix the pump though.

I have a pond full of newts that look after themselves. One day I'm going to fill it in.

Fuck those newts in particular.

Yeah, that's the spirit! What have these newts ever done for us? Nothing.. That's what!

I have a separate pond for wildlife, a few years ago I had fish in both, I found frogs where trying to kill my goldfish as they would eat their spawn.

I found a frog who had got onto the top of one fish and was holding it at the bottom of the pond.

So all the fish went into one pond and every year I move frogspawn and any frogs I find into the wildlife pond, this is getting less of an activity each year.

Still have newts in with the fish.

Newts are newt the problem, get those frogeiners out!
FROGSIT MEANS FROGSIT!

You think the frogs set about murdering the goldfish in a quest for revenge over their spawn?

They’re a protected species...

...as are frogs

That's what I read online at the time, they said that the frogs will try and blind the fish

Now all I can find is people saying that the frog is mistaking the fish for a lady frog and will "hop off" in a few days once it realizes its mistake

We think we have about 10 babies!

How do you know if there are too many fish in the pond? We now have at least 20.

It's ok. The pond grows to the number of fish you have, I believe.

When the fish rise up against their human oppresors.

Nice to see you have the obligatory Tesco plastic bag in there, just like all the big ponds and lakes in public parks. But you do need to add a couple of empty Foster's cans.

We didn't dare remove it incase it upset anything. Although the pond has gone so crazy you can't see it any more. In fact, you can't really see much of anything!

So, we are going to do some diagnosis Breaking Bad style.

Oh yeah, I've started the process of getting rid of my pond. Because of the hot weather, it's mostly dried out so I've dug a load of sludge out and drilled some holes in the bottom of one section. It's very substantial and is going to take some getting rid of.

Our water levels have been dropping quickly. I did wonder if we had torrential rain and flooding if they would end up over the lawn.

I drove past the reservoirs outside Glossop today (twice, fact fans) and they were really, really,low. Most of the water was being held in the top one,the lower one was basically mud flats.

Meh, they get like that every year. Come October, they'll be overflowing again.

We did all the tests on the water today, and it all seems fine. We topped up the water level too, I think it could do with just a bit more though. Blanket weed seems to be our main issue, so we can focus on getting that sorted out now.

You can get stuff for Blanket weed not cheap if I recall

Top the pond as high as you can, it will drop in this heat, I'm topping mine up once a week.

Blanket weed, other algae and to a lesser extent duck weed can be controlled using barley straw bales. As they decompose they release hydrogen peroxide and other stuff; algae can't cope with the minute pH changes but fish, newts and so on are fine.

So we're told anyway, we've got some to try.

It turns out that the UV filter also has the spongy bits that need to be cleaned out. we had a go and it pumped out a lot of thick green sludge for a while, but seems to be running clear now. Of course we then had to top up the pond again. We pulled out some more blanket weed and have a treatment arriving tomorrow.

I did read about the hay, and we might try that if this doesn't work, but I'm hoping that clearing out the filters will help to make a difference. It seems to be a situation where prevention is definitely better than cure, but I suppose it's all a learning curve.

Well the pond has cleared by a depth of at least 18 inches over night. I can see stuff I had forgotten was there - as well as the fish! They came straight for food this morning too, probably because they can actually see it now...