Cycling is critical for a new pond that contains fish, but it is also necessary for a pond featuring aquatic plants. Keep test kits on hand so you can monitor the pond water's levels of ammonia, nitrates and salt as well as its pH. The test kits are available at most stores that sell pond supplies. Fill your pond with water, and add a chlorine detox chemical to remove heavy metals and chlorine.
Dissolve salt in a bucket of water, and add the bucket's contents to your pond until you get a pond water salinity reading of 0. Decomposing plants and fish waste produce ammonia. Certain kinds of bacteria in water turn ammonia into nitrites NO2 , which are bad for the health of fish. Some other kinds of bacteria turn nitrites into nitrates. In small amounts.
An aeration device is the best way to add oxygen to water and keep your pond healthy. Both surface and submerged aquatic plants help control nitrates. Yes, you have a filter in place, but what is it doing? For the moment, pretty much nothing but passing water back into your pond. Your filter needs a bacteria colony that will break down the fish waste. Ok, so how do you get a bacteria colony in there? Some people say that you can add water from another pond into yours as sort of a starter bacteria colony.
This is a bad idea for a couple of reasons. First, the bacteria that might be in the water you collected are not likely to survive the trip to your pond. They are fragile to a certain extent. Speaking of dirty water, what if that friend of yours does not know the water has some sort of parasite in it?
You read that correctly! Now you have effectively transferred that parasite to your water where it will wait for your fish. With as many nasty Koi diseases and parasites out there today, transferring water like that is just not a safe bet.
The best way to create a bacteria colony is to start small. Get one fish. Let that fish eat and produce waste in a quantity that the bacteria can actually handle. The colony will grow pretty quickly, but at this early stage, you do not want to overload it. So you start with one fish. Now keep a log of when the fish was added and head out to the local pond shop and get yourself a good water test kit.
The kit should include at least the following:. Plants first or fish first? We found our plants struggled until we had a good sized fish load. So I would say add them at the same time but plan to feed your plants until your fish get established. You do need ammonia to get your pond cycling - introducing fish is one way to go.
Using "sacrificial" fish is a controversial subject. I think MitchM has discussed using ammonia instead of fish to achieve the initial cycle. Consider the size of your pond when you decide how many fish you can handle Less is always better than more when it comes to fish load. Hope that's somewhat helpful! Your questions are all good ones! Let me tell you my story that relates to two of those questions: I top off my water with a constant trickle of new water that comes out an overflow.
I put about 40 gallons a day into a gallon pond. I don't treat it for the chloramines that are in my water. I only treated the initial fill. I completely avoided adding any fish I didn't want in the pond AND completely avoided ever seeing a bit of ammonia in the pond. I took a couple of sponges from an established container pond and placed them in the new filter's biological filter area. Then I added three " fish to that pond.
Every week I added more fish like that for weeks. Like I said, I never had a bit of ammonia or nitrite in the water. The two answers may be related, though. Treating for the chloramines put about 0.
I waited until that went away before adding any fish. That took about a week. So I took it slow. Today I have about 30 " fish in the pond. They are still not near the support capacity of the pond, but as they grow in the next couple of years, they might be. Last edited: Dec 28, I'm curious Just curious.
My input - Plan on about 4 weeks for a new pond to fully cycle, maybe sooner depending on how you manage it. Have everything running - water circulation, filters and plants.
Do not use fish to cycle the pond, fish are fish, they will still get burned gills from excess levels of ammonia. Use the fishless cycling ammonia calculator down in my signature and follow the directions. Maintain an ammonia level of 3 - 4 ppm until the ammonia that you add disappears within 24 hours. Check ammonia levels daily. Meyer Jordan Tadpole. Tula said:. Click to expand JBtheExplorer Native Gardener. MitchM said:. Meyer Jordan said:. Simple answer Mmathis TurtleMommy. Set the plants, filter and pond up After 4 weeks add 1 fish every week till you reached your fish goal capacity.
Using feeder fish imo is a mistake Mmathis said:. All good answers so far!
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