On Sat, 14 Jun 2003 16:12:20 +0100, Smith wrote:

We moved in last year, and there was a pond (in the garden, complete with
liner, but no water. We filled it, (it's 3750 litres - is this medium or
large?) and left it for about 2 weeks then introduced plants.

Some people would call it tiny and some would call it huge, it's bigger
(at 833 gallons) than the one here at 600 :-)

We then added 15 goldfish and a pond pump. The fish seemed OK - we lost one
to ulcers over the last summer. Frogs, newts, snails and water boatmen all
took up residence, so we assumed we had created a good habitat.

No filter?

However, from September to March, we lost 3 fish to ulcers. I did ulcer
treatments after we lost the first two, but it didn't seen to do much good,
so I did it again, then we lost 2 more.

In March, I salted the pond (1% dilution) and everything seemed OK for a
little while, so we got 10 more fish, making the total 21.

Practical Fishkeeping http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk says one
10" fish per hundred gallons so without filtration you will be
overstocked when they grow.

I feel awful, as I feel I'm just putting fish in there, and condemning them
to death. I have put a Medipad in yesterday, to see if that will help, but I
don't know what else to do. The pond is reasonably clear, and all the other
wildlife is surviving, indeed the snails and frogs bred this year.

Any advice would be gratefully appreciated. I thought goldfish were
reasonably low maintenance, compared to Koi, and that they were more
tolerant od fluctuations in condition. If they keep dying, I'm just going to
have to have a pond without fish, because I don't feel like putting any more
in there, just for them to die.

I don't know whether you are new to fishkeeping or not but Goldfish are
pretty hardy so something is wrong. Can you take a sample of water down
to your fish supplier for testing, many will do this for free or a
small charge. I would buy a kit though since testing it yourself gets
you more involved.

With no filtration it won't take long for toxins to build up, is the
pump just driving a fountain. If you have a filter is it cleaned as
needed? Do you clean it in pondwater? Tapwater will kill the bacteria
so it will have to restart each time and this takes a couple of weeks.

Do the fish come to you when you go to the pond? If not you may be
overfeeding.

--
Regards - Rodney Pont
The from address exists but is mostly dumped,
please send any emails to the address below
e-mail ngps07 (at) infohit (dot) fsnet (dot) co (dot) uk