I have to admit to being a bad pond parent when it comes to changing the water and doing all that testing. Never have done either. I do top it off due to water loss through evaporation. This will be my third or fourth year for the bottom goldfish pond and second year for the top pond. The filtration for the bottom pond is a 35ft long stream with three waterfalls that serves as a biofilter. The top pond has filtrations equivilant to about twice the recommended levels simply because I reasoned that overfiltration is better than under. I agree with snapple on the UV lights. With the upper pond I tried everthing I could think of to get rid of the pea soup water last year and nothing worked until I got the filter with the UV light. Had clear water within a month. It is correct that it will kill both the algea and bacteria but there is more than enough good bacteria left on solid surfaces in the pond to keep your ecosystem going. No one does water changes in farm ponds or lakes and they do just fine all on their own.
See my new fish and some golden oldies that were hidden!
Nice .... Eutrophication!!! My favorite!
Now THERE'S a word I haven't been able to use since 9th grade Earth Science!!
The Koi and Water Garden Society of Central New York has a nice chart on identifying.
Not sure it helped me, exactly .... but ..... here it is.
http://www.cnykoi.com/koiid/main.asp
That's a fabulous link! It would take me years to get all those patterns instantly recognizable in my head. Surprisingly, I was able to use it to classify a couple of my koi that I thought were just pet store mixed-breeds.
One thing I did get out of college is Boolean Search Techniques.
WooHoo .... someone finally benefitted from it!!
this is a good link for looking at the actual fish patterns too.
http://www.koisale.com/wholesale.htm
Nice Link, Lavender4ever!! That's a very good one!
While we are on a roll .... here is another .... VERY informative with tons of pictures all labeled!!
Be Patient with this one, as it takes a LONG time to load, but it is WELL worth it.
It is in Dutch, and if you need help on that it just so happens that ik spreek kleine beetje nederlands, ook.
http://sontrana2.spaces.live.com/
what did you call me? hee hee