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The Essentials of Pond Keeping |
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Tuesday, 03 March 2009 |
I was trying to think of a topic for our first club discussion and I remembered that a few club members had commented to me that they had fish but they really never had an education in the fundamentals of pond keeping. Like just about all of us they picked up knowledge as they go. So what better place to start our club discussions than with the basics?
A brief aside here, I spent many years as the Scoutmaster of a Boy Scout Troop and I am an avid hiker and backpacker. Just about all activities have a either formal or informal list of the basic “rules” or tips for doing the activity. Follow those bits of wisdom and you will probably do just fine. In the hiking and backpacking community they have a concept they call the “10 Essentials.” The 10 essentials is a list of things that you should always have with you on a hike. These 10 things form a survival kit that at least will make for a safer and more enjoyable hike at most may even save your life. If that topic interests you just Google “the 10 essentials” and you should find a wealth of information.
So why not try to make an essentials list for our favorite hobby? So at our last meeting I brought along a huge notepad and a classroom easel. As a group we brainstormed a list of things we all agreed were essential to Koi and pond keeping. We wouldn’t limit ourselves to ten items either. We would assume that you already have a pond as this is not intended to be a how to build a pond list. We also assumed that you have fish and/or plants in your pond.
Les Mize kicked us off with test kits as the first item on our list and after a while we came up with the following list of essential items.
1. Water Test Kits
2. Tank for Quarantine
3. Nets for skim or capture
4. Backup pumps for water or air
5. Koi First Aid kit
6. Show Bowl
7. Patch kit
8. Education
9. Networking
10. Maintenance
11. Water Quality
So that was our list of 11 essentials. Now coming into this topic I was thinking that we would make a list of items. A pond keeper’s shopping list if you will. As the discussion progressed it became clear to the group that maybe this needed to be a list of both items and topics. Some items are koi specific some are not. So let’s look closer at the items in our list.
1. Water Test Kits
All living things are affected by their environment. If you have a pond with anything living in it that you want to keep alive, healthy and happy then you need to know what the condition of your pond water is. Test kits are available to test for a variety of things. Salt level, Ph, Nitrates, Nitrites, and Ammonia test kits are probably that basic kits you need to have. In addition to that you need to learn what those results means and what to do about it.
2. Tank for quarantine
We all like new things and every once and a while we bring new things into our ponds. Some of these things are alive, like Koi, and may pose a threat to the other living things in our pond. The truth is, sometimes plants and fish have diseases or carry parasites and it is best that you treat those fish for common diseases and parasites before you introduce them to the other living things in your pond. In any gathering of pond folks you will hear horror stories of pond die-offs where everything in the pond goes belly up. It makes me cringe to simply write that. These die off happen for a variety of reasons and one of those reasons can be introducing plants or fish that were not quarantined or treated before being put in your main pond . By having a quarantine tank and screening all living things before you put them in your main pond you can reduce the likelihood of this happening to your pond. Plus quarantine tanks can serve as a hospital room for anything that become ill and needs treatment.
3. Nets for skim or capture.
This is pretty self explanatory. Skim nets are useful for cleaning debris off the surface of your pond and capture nets are necessary if any of your fish become ill and need to be removed from your main pond and placed in your quarantine tank for treatment.
4. Backup pumps for air or water
Pumps fail and when they bad things can happen. Having something on hand to keep your water circulating through your filtration system or at least an air pump to oxygenate the water can save you from a potential catastrophe.
5. First aid kit
Living things get sick and it is a good idea to have a selection of treatments on hand in case that happens. First aid kits can be as simple as a big bag of chemical free salt to a full fish triage kit. Some of our members have large tool boxes that they use as first aid kits packed full of useful things. This is a topic that that can spawn several discussions and we will need to address in more detail.
6. Show Bowl
Show Bowls are used in tandem with your nets to capture and move fish or plants and examine them. Any watertight container (like a bucket or bin) that is big enough to fit your fish will work but if you are serious about your fish you should probably consider getting a nice blue one with marking inside to measure your fish with.
7. Patch kit
One of the most frustrating things we can face is a leaky pond. Sometimes finding and patching a leak is a long series of trials and errors. In any event if your pond leaks out it will endanger your living treasures and can cost you a lot of time, money and frustration. It is a good idea to keep some materials on hand to deal with the possibility of leaks. What exactly you will need depends on how you build your pond.
8. Education
Knowledge is power. Maybe you won’t be taking over the world any time soon but the more you know about pond keeping the better prepared you will be to deal with anything that may come your way. Not only that, knowledge can deepen your appreciation for your pond and your search for knowledge can introduce you to many fine people who share your interests. Information is available in books, online or from other fellow pond folks. It’s as simple as asking a question.
9.Networking
Whether it’s talking to people on an online pond forum, at koi or pond shows, or at a koi club meeting, knowing people with the same interests is a great thing. Most folks like to help each other and having a great network of pond people makes for a more enjoyable hobby. Just in my relatively few years in the koi hobby the network of folks I’ve met has resulted in some fun times, lots of great information and has even saved my fish once or twice and helped build a pond or two. Reach out, say hi, introduce yourself. Good things might happen.
10. Maintenance
This one seemed necessary to have on the list. Of all the ponds I’ve seen I’ve never yet seen a pond that required no maintenance. To get the most out of your pond you need to take care of it regularly. Cleaning, water testing and checking on the health of the things in the pond is a must. A regularly maintained pond can provide years of enjoyment.
11. Water quality
There was some debate if this is a separate item or if test kits should be a sub set of water quality. In any event the most basic element of any pond is that it contains water. The water in your pond must be maintained to support the things you want to live in your pond. The parameters of the quality are dictated by what lives in the pond and will require you get some of that education we talked about earlier. Water quality is crucial to success of any pond.
So that is the list of essentials we came up with. Granted it probably could use some adjustments but I think we accomplished the goal of listing out the things we thought were essential to pond keeping. In further meetings we will refine this list and learn more about each item in the list. So stay tuned, there is more to come
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