Keeping water in balance
Garden Pond Chemicals
This is the area of hobbyist backyard ponds that trick up many, many pond owners. When you start looking at the chemicals, Sodium thiosulfate this and dechlorinate that will quickly make the pond enthusiast begin to feel as if they wandered back into high school science class. Keeping watch over a backyard pond probably makes use of many of the skills that were learned in a high school science class anyway. It can be both absurdly easy to take care of your pond and mind boggling in complexity at times.
First off, one of the biggest concerns for those who have a pond is getting rid of the chlorine, and chloramines in the water, especially if the pond was filled with tap water. The level of chlorine and chloramines placed in our drinking water is safe enough for us but deadly to anything with gills, by dissolving the gills, literally. Owners can be fanatical about testing the water for levels of these two chemicals. If you are just filling up your pond for the first time you can wait a week or so for the chlorines to rise from the water and it will be safe to introduce aquatic life. However if your local water treatment plant adds chloramines to the water you should wait about two weeks before adding fish and other life.
If you all ready have fish in the water or you are adding more water to a pond, totaling more than ten percent of the original water volume you may wish to add a chemical to the water to remove the chlorine and chloramines quickly. When using these chemicals there is a risk of adding too much and harming your fish, so you want to be as exact as possible in your measurements. Sodium thiosulfate is a good dechlorinator and will remove the chlorine from your water. It can be bought in bulk at many aquatic stores or can be found for sale online. To dechloriminate your water you can find a product that contains poly vinyl compounds, not any of that contains formalin. Formalin won’t reduce the chloramines it just causes a growth of slime on the gills of your aquatic life that supposedly helps to keep the gills protected. This can also harm your fish and make them sick.
Other reasons to use chemicals in your pond may be:
- To get rid of algae
- To balance the pH level
- To increase the size of your aquatic life (fertilizers)
- To reduce the ammonia, nitrite and nitrate levels, these are compounds that would be removed by adding beneficial bacteria rather than vice versa.
Most of the bulleted reasons for adding chemicals can be taken care of without resorting to the ‘final’ solution of chemicals. Nearly all new ponds develop algae blooms in the first two weeks, and every spring ponds will develop one. You can put in lots of plants to remove the algae’s nutrients from the water and shade the water. The less light algae gets the less of a hold it will have. Adjusting the pH level is also partly to keep the risks of algae blooms down as well as providing a comfortable environment for the fish. They can handle a little variation of range, but if the pH level drops below 7.0 you will want to treat the water. Fertilizers have a bad habit of leaking into the surrounding environment and causing pollution. If you are patient and provide lots of food, light and attention to the aquatic life it is sure to reach a decent size on its own.
The Ammonia, nitrite and nitrate levels in a pond are the waste products of the aquatic life in your pond. You may have a special filter that can keep the levels of these compounds down or you might add some beneficial bacteria that can be found at many aquatics stores.