Hi Rob - Welcome to insanity, but we love it. I use Becket Chloramine
remover which I get from Lowe's. I believe it is the best buy. I use
Aquarium Pharmaceuticals test kits from Petsmart,but none are perfect for my
taste, because all 3( Pond, Salt, Freshwater) arent quite all the tests
individually in each 'set'. You will need a pH, Ammonia, Nitrite and
Nitrate to test for cycling your bio filter and an occasional kH(alkalinity)
and gH(general hardness) test strip.

Two weeks sounds like a good start on adding any fish, but the key is adding
them slowly. I speak from experience when I say the biggest newbie mistake
is probably adding too many fish too fast. Ecspecially with winter coming
on your filter will take a will to develope bio bacteria to handle the
ammonia and nitrites, and then will probably die back as it becomes colder.
So the water will be the only thing to dissipate the ammonia and nitrites
(bad stuff) in your water, which the fish create. The more and bigger fish
you have, with no established filter, the quicker they start get poisoned
and become susceptible to bacteria and parasitic infections. You spend
time, trouble and money trying to diagnose and correct the problem. Fewer
fish, fewer problems. I started with one small comet and 2 little
shubunkins - that was good (850 Gallons). Then as spring came around I
decided to add about a dozen feeder comets - I mean after all what could
that hurt. You will hear stories of how someone started with tiny feeders
and now they have 40 nice sized ones that grew from the original 6. You
may also hear as many stories about how the feeders introduced disease and
infection and thats when the problems began. The feeders are grown in very
poor conditions and I personally would advise against them. Strickly
speaking you set up a holding tank and quarantine any new fish for up to a
month, watching for problems such as ick, fungus, ragged fins, lethagy,
flashing, swelling etc. Though perhaps less than ideal I personally would
go ahead and use the pond as a holding tank and just know that if problems
begin you will have to treat 400 gallons instead of 20-100 gallons. Water
adjustments are still quite reasonably priced untill you start getting up to
koi sized ponds. I have learned a heck of a lot from this group in the past
9 months but the two main things I have learned is 1)TAKE CARE OF YOUR WATER
PARAMETERS and 2) Carefully and slowly add fish and plants to your pond and
you will probably have much fewer problems. You and your fish will spend
much more time in delight than distress. Yes, plants should also be treated
before putting them in your pond, to knock of any bad 'bugs', snails etc.
You will know you are on the right track when you start getting string algae
and/or bloom. Algae is generally a good thing, although too much of any
good things often becomes bad.
Have Fun! It is a wonderful hobby. As your personal symptoms appear,
someone will tell you what PORGdom is. There is no cure for this except
enjoying your pond to the max.
Good Luck
Bill Brister - Austin, Texas

"Rob" wrote in message
om...
Oh, I'm an excited new ponder. After a month of recovering from a
back injury (due to digging out my 400 gallon pond!), I put in the
liner & water, ran the electricity and turned on the pump. The short
waterfall with small veggie filters isn't running yet, but the pump
pushes the water through the Oase pressurized filter. No koi planned,
just goldfish and hopefully frogs.

Questions: I live in San Francisco, where we have chloramine in the
water. What do I use to counteract it? Can you recommend a good
water testing kit? How often should I test? If I add more water to
compensate for evaporation, do I need to add more chems to nix the
chloramine? How long before I could add fauna?

Thanks...