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11-04-2006, 01:51 AM posted to rec.ponds

On Mon, 10 Apr 2006 19:17:45 -0400, (Peter Smith) wrote:

I just cleaned out my 60 gal. kidney shaped pond.
I have about 6, 3 inch comets and 1, 5 inch speckled koi and 1, 4 inch
frog.

I put the the fish and frog in a 20 gal tub, with water from the pond
from over the winter.
Coved it up with mesh. Put a air bubblier hose in.
I scrubbed and drained the muck out. I got the black pond liner nice and
clean.
I put 40 gals. of fresh, new water in, then added almost the rest of the
water from the tub back in.
I added pond-zime to the dose, in. I added 16oz. of aquarium salt and
stress coat to the dose.
I cleaned the 1000 gal.ph fishmate box filter out and hooked up to the
90 gal.ph beckett pump.
I pulled the plant pot, that's starting to sprout from the bottom and
put it on the first level.
I netted the fish and frog back in.
The water is a little cloudy, but it looks fine.

I live in mid PA, so the water is around 52 degrees. No feeding till it
gets up around 55-60 at night.

So, How do you think I did?

Hi Pete,

Well.... I normally don't recommend people scrub the liner. Rinse the dirt
off, but leave anything growing on the liner.

Currently you now have a completely new system, and when you started it 2
years ago, I bet you didn't start with that many fish of that size?

So you're going to have to watch your water quality really close, with test
kits! That cloudy water could be ammonia building up. I wouldn't feed the
fish for several weeks. Have an ammonia binder (Amquel) on hand, salt to
detox the nitrite that will come later.

Ideally 1 small koi needs 100 gallons, is that 60 gallons w/7 fish total
correct? Time to start digging perhaps? ;o) ~ jan

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(Do you know where your water quality is?)