Waterchanges?

[Melody]

I can't remember if I asked this before or not, so I'll ask it again :rolleyes: . When you have a pond of reasonable size, do you do waterchanges? I was about to reply to a post from Pam that she wouldn't mind putting her fish back outside because she wouldn't have to do waterchanges, but I'm not sure if that's the case or not and now I'm curious. :confused:

And when did water changes become all one word anyway? lol

[OldMan]

Melody, I don't know if there is a standard for ponds but I treat mine as an over-sized fish tank. That means that my pond tub gets very large water changes but I will admit they don't happen as often as the ones in my indoor tanks.

[bobp9500]

In my large pond I have run "Big O" pipe underground from my eaves trough on the house to the pond. That way each time it rains---water change!
In my small one on the deck I only top it up with the garden hose. It's cold water and it's chlorinated but so far no problems. Be careful---water sitting in a garden hose that's dormant becomes deadly poisonous to fish.---allow the water to run long enough to remove the stagnant water. The plastic in the garden hose lets off chemicals that compound in the hose, especially in the heat of summer.---boB

[OldMan]

Good advice there in the hose being toxic. I worried about it because of the smell but never really knew it was toxic. I actually change so much at once that you will find me in the back yard with a large bucket and a bottle of prime. A squirt goes into each bucket while it is filling and the full bucket gets dumped into the tub pond. When the weather is cold, I actually carry a small bucket of hot water outside to mix with the cold hose water to get a bit closer on temperature.

[Gobies et al]

When I had my 800 gal. pond outside, I would clean the bottom about weekly and do water changes, too. I would run my hose a few minutes to clear the old possibly toxic water out, then connect an inline chlorine/chloramine filter, and slowly top up the pond. I have read somewhere, that you can do <30% water changes with Koi without having to use dechlorinaters. I was not willing to chance it so used the filter. I ran it slow to give the filter a chance to be effective. I never had any problem.

My indoor 300 gal. required water changes every 5 days or the kH would drop too low and pH would start to drop.

[Pamelajo]

Last year I think I only did one to clean the bottom. We had soo much rain that it would evaporate a couple of inches weekly and fill back up with rain water.

[Gobies et al]

In Alberta, we normally only get 12 - 18" of precipitation a year. That is not enough to keep the pond flushed and topped up.

Do you have something arranged so your pond doesn't overflow the banks?

[Pamelajo]

My pond is just a 30 gallon barrel with an insert. We have a hole in the actual barrel so overflow goes into barrel and drains out of there. The year before I was topping up at least 3 times a week due to evaporation and the dog drinking it and did a waterchange every second week.

[Melody]

I had no idea - I thought ponds were low maintenance in that regard. Nature does a fine job on hers :Angel: <= That's my naive look...lol.

[CACAdmin]

The first year in my nano pond (about 7-8 gallons), I must have found the perfect balance (by sheer accident). I only did one water change all summer (occupants were Hets and a few marisa snails. The water lettuce and water hyacinth seemed to do an excellent job of keeping nitrates, etc. very low.

However, this last year, my occupants were strictly marisas but more of them and so the need for waterchanges was greater. (snails can be messy creatures)... so I was doing waterchanges about every 2-3 weeks which is still much less frequent than I would have done in a tank indoors. Large leaf water lettuce with those long roots seems to really soak up nitrates. Note to self (cut back on the # of occupants or get a bigger pond...lol).

[OldMan]

Melody, you need to not look at a pond as a natural condition. A pond that is set up and filled by you is as artificial as a tank. If you dam up a creek to create it, that might be self sustaining because rain would flush it out and keep the water sweet. It would also be a quick way to lose lots of fish to the environment. As long as the level goes down and needs artificial filling, it is really a big fish tank. Water changes will be needed to keep it clean.

[Melody]

That's logical, but a disappointment anyway...lol. The lawns & plants must enjoy the water at least. :yes:

[firestorm]

In Alberta, we normally only get 12 - 18" of precipitation a year. That is not enough to keep the pond flushed and topped up.

Do you have something arranged so your pond doesn't overflow the banks?

Except the amount of rain we have had over the past 5 years or so :eek:

[Gobies et al]

We certainly have had unusual amounts of rain in recent years. Did Calgary ever get hit hard!:err: