Hello everybody.

I'm a new ponder. I finished my pond in late september, but by the time ph
settled down and stopped jumping all over the place it was too cold to add
fish (my indoor koi and i are anxioulsy waiting for spring). The current
pond residents are 3 crawdads and whatever water bugs that have found the
place. Anyways, last week I went out to check on the pond and I noticed
a weird white mold type of film on the liner. Most of the liner is covered
by normal brown/green algea and dirt, but in a few spots theres the white
stuff. There doesn't seem to be any pattern to where it shows up and it
seems to be spreading. Is this something I need to worry about? I haven't
read about anything like this before. Anyone out there experience this
before or have any guesses or suggestions? Thanks!

Megan

On Fri, 20 Feb 2004 11:04:59 -0800, "Megan"
wrote:

I don't believe the water is hard, how would i cheack that? also, in my
experiennce deposits usually form on along the water line and are kinda of
hard. The white spots in my pond started on the bottom of the pond way out
in the middle and are easily moved.

The ideal environment for fish has some minerals dissolved in the
water. Here are a couple sites if you wish to read about it.
http://www.drhelm.com/aquarium/chemistry.html
http://www.aquanic.org/publicat/usda...srac/464fs.pdf

You can get a test kit from Pet Smart that tests pH,(high and low) GH
and KH as well as ammonia and salt. I understand there are different
combinations of kits, so you might want to read about the kit before
you grab it and run to the register.

Personally I'd forget the deposit and move on. I have the opposite
problem with soft water. A couple years ago I tried to keep my soft
water up to the recommended hardness levels and was buying baking soda
and gypsum in quantity. Every week I needed more baking soda and the
fish didn't seem to care what my little kit said, they just kept
eating whether I added the soda or not. Things changed last year and
I didn't do much except feed fish and the fish are still growing and
come to the top to be fed and look good, except for Klingon and Dirty
Face and they are just naturally ugly koi and baking soda can't cure
that.

Regards,

Hal