Hi Ademink: I raise about 1/2 tons of salmon and trouts and used to raise koi as well. What you have described is sometimes commun when females can not release their eggs for some reason (not enough oxygen, hardness too low, water temp too high, chlorine/chloramine or polutents in the water... During the re-absorption process, it may take a few weeks, it is important to oxygenate the water. My preference is to oxygenate by moving water with a pump, air stone may be more damaging. Oxygen bubbles from an air stone may get trapped in the gills preventing dissolved oxygen to cyrculate properly. Salting does not solve all the problem...! As a matter of fact may creat others... Do check your harness and alkalinity as you should anyways. Proper hardness will help eggs in their hardening process, render any polutents especially metals significantly less toxic to fishs, prevent pH fluctuation and along with oxygen helps the bacteria to process waste. Have you noticed any eggs (white looking stuff) in the plants?

There are many ways to run a pond, each person has to decide for themselves. The dirt in the water is a tough one because it depends on the kind of dirt. Some will settle right away, some will stay cloudy for a long time. It will most likely settle at some point in the future. Tomorrow, next week, next year, no way to tell. There is also the question of what "clear" means to you. What one person considers clear another person would not. If it were me, unless water was being rationed or really expensive I'd dump the water and start over. You will have plenty of other issues, no sense adding to that list. Chalk it up to learning. I don't think there would be any problem adding fish to a pond that's cloudy from dirt. There's a small issue of the fish getting grit in their gills, but I think that concern is way over hyped. Grit settles. What stays suspended is clay and Koi live in mud ponds all the time. There are endless products being sold to clear the water. All are scams. Some actually could work, like flocculants. These are used in waste treatment plants. But in order to truely work 3 steps are needed. 1. Pour in the flocculant. 2. Apply extreme agitation to get the bits to clump into large enough clumps for the next step. 3. Removal of clumps using a fairly sophisticated filter. Pond flocculant products being sold don't talk about steps 2 & 3 of course. So people buy the product, which is the only step the seller really cares about, pour it in and it often makes things worst or if the pond does clear it's only temporary because the polymers in flocculants break down pretty fast and the clumped dirt goes back to being dirt. Virtually all pond products work that way. Part truth with a lot of scam. Sellers don't worry about repeat business because only people new to ponds buy these products. "Benefical bacteria" same deal. Most are completely worthless. There are a few that may sometimes contain some actual benefical bacteria and in a few cases can help. For example say you were about to add 20 full grown Koi to your 2100 gal pond. In that case you'd expect ammonia problems right away so trying to get bacteria working fast would save you some work in the next couple of weeks. But if you're like most people you're going to add a small number of very small fish which won't create an ammonia problem. You already have benefical bacteria in your pond, they're everywhere. They reproduce to fit the environment. Right now there's almost no ammonia for them to eat, so they just sit around watching Oprah all day. As soon as there's more ammonia they start eating and reproducing. Adding more bacteria to a pond that doesn't have the food (ammonia) available does nothing but add waste to the pond. If you really want to create more bacteria before adding fish you can do that by adding ammonia, plain ammonia from the drug store, to your pond. Use your ammonia test kit to get it up to some reasonable level, say 2ppm. Then use your test kit to to measure ammonia dropping, and maybe nitrite climbing and then falling. Takes about a week for the ammonia to go, nitrite can take longer if you measure any. Ammonia is also a food for algae so doing this really requires a UV filter to stop algae from sucking up all the ammonia as fast as you can put it in. Or, just add a few small fish at a time and let them produce the ammonia for the bacteria. Simple as pie. Local pond store guys are the worst pond keepers on the planet. They have to be. Water Gardens are very easy to run and require almost nothing be added. No pond store could stay in business based on that. So they make a living selling stuff no one needs. I have seen a few good pond stores that made most of their money selling good quality Koi and useful products like liner and high end filters. But those are rare. Adding salt to a pond is done by some people, not a lot. Whether it's a benefit is inconclusive in my book. The biggest problem I have with it is what do you do with waste water. Dump it on your lawn? Over time that probably isn't going to be good. Most cities have laws against sending down a storm drain or sewer. With no clear benefit I say who needs the hassle. And it takes a lot of salt to raise a 2100 gal pond to a level that matters. I'm guessing the pond guy sold you like a few pounds of sea salt flown in from the Black Sea or something. Regular water softer salt from the hardware store is all that's needed if you chose to go that route. $5 for a 40 lb bag. I'm guessing the pond store guy's salt costs a lot more. Salt is salt.

Hi there I am new on here but have found the info valuable so far so thanks to all. I think we have just made a HUGE mistake with our new pond. We originally dug a pond 6ft by 9 ft by 2ft deep and kept seven goldfish in it which wintered well and seemed happy. Being bitten by the fishkeeping bug we then dug a larger pond on the raised area above the original pond which is 15ft by 20ft but we miscalculated the depth. We originally planned 2ft 6" but when it was filled we realised it was less than two feet deep. By this time we had moved the fish into place and have been given two smalll koi and three Golden orfe along with another bucket full of goldfish so 29 in all. The water surface is plentiful but i am worried about the lack of depth. We have a large rubber liner in it which is now trimmed to size and rocked over and planted out around the edges. so to change this would mean a complete redig. Has anybody any ideas whereas we could cut the middle out of the liner and dig the middle bit a lot deeper then join on a new piece of liner? I think this could be an option. I dont want unhappy fish but my husband is groaning at the thought of rebuilding the whole thing.!

First off you only need to de-chlorinate the water when you add new water. If the water has been in the pond for 6 weeks the chlorine has long since dissipated. The green water is just unsightly to you and not harmful to the fish. Pleco's won't do a thing to clear green water. They graze on the algae that grows on the surface of the pond liner and other things that are in the pond. The green water is caused by single cell free floating algae. It's normally caused by water rich in nitrogen. You can help control single cell algae by putting plants in your pond to use up the nitrogen. You can also add some shade to help. Algae will thrive in bright light. As for your fish, I'd say don't fret too much. Fish will often hide for several days or more when moved to a new environment. If you are putting food into the pond and it's not being eaten make sure you remove it. Not doing so will contribute to the algae problem. Just visit the pond frequently and maybe just sit around for awhile. When the fish understand you are not going to harm them they will start coming up to visit with you. Oh and I forgot to mention that a UV light is often used to control free algae. You can get one from a pond store or online. Kinda pricey but worth it when you have algae issues. You have a very nice pond. I'm sure you will enjoy it once gets balanced