If your pond fish are acting weird, this may be the easiest red flag warning that something is amiss in your pond! Find out from our pond pro, Jeff, how to fix a bad pond and save your koi pond fish.
In a healthy pond, koi and other fish will swim gracefully around, nibbling on bits of algae or bugs in the water, or glide around rocks. The fish like to swim in groups generally and will follow each other, coming to the surface for a bug or to investigate a bubble then diving back down to continue swimming. During hot, bright sunshine pond fish may rest in the shade of larger rocks or under plant leaves.
If your fish are not calm, swim erratically, twitch, fan their gills a lot, or seem to be “gasping” at the water’s surface, this is a red flag warning that the pond chemistry is off. You may observe other unnormal fish behavior also.
When fish are acting weird, we do a quick dip strip water test because an unhealthy environment is the #1 source of unhealthy fish. Dark colors indicate high levels of nitrates, nitrites, phosphates, or an abnormal pH. This is “bad pond symptom”! What should you do if this is your water test result?
Some think plants alone will fix high nitrates and nitrites. We find plants are a good long-term solution but when in crisis mode, i.e. fish in distress, tossing in some water hyacinth will not save your fish! To paraphrase Dr. Johnson, koi vet extraordinaire, “If you’re in a room filled with smoke, do you turn on the air purifier or open the freaking window?”
Save the Fish!
- Do a 20-25% water change if desperate. Use fish-safe water (city water contains chlorine- not good for fish!) When using city water, use detoxifier. The water change will lower the temperature and nutrition levels in the water in an emergency situation. You do NOT need to change the water every day. Frequent water changes can stress the fish even more!
- Find a healthy pond and get a scoop of slime or bucket of slightly scummy looking water from their filter pad. This will bring a batch of good bacteria to your pond.
- Stop feeding the fish or feed VERY lightly. Sick fish don’t eat much when stressed and the extra food will decompose, adding to the water problems.
- Add ammonia binder or Pond Detoxifier products.
After the initial crisis, prevent another bad day for your pond fish.
Biological filters do not need to be rinsed; actually, it is healthier to NOT rinse them! The filter is the home for beneficial bacteria which break down fish waste and other nutrients in the water. Typically, a filter only needs to be cleaned once a year.
To boost the bacteria power and get clean pond water and healthy fish, regularly add beneficial bacteria. You may need to add it every day to get it established in your filtration media (dare we say “gravel”?).
Adding a phosphate binder also helps knock down high levels by making extra phosphates sink to the bottom as inert particles. (SAB is a helpful product for this.)
Adding aeration to the pond will also help! Oxygen boosts beneficial bacteria growth and activity which will lead to clear pond water. Oxygen will also help the fish thrive.
Long Term Backyard Pond Care Solutions:
Make sure your filter is big enough to handle the load. Load can be number and size of koi fish, amount of fish food being tossed in, plant matter, rain, lawn run-off, or children or pets playing in the water. All of these add nutrients and particles to the water.
Plants alone will take quite some time to remove nutrition. If fish are stressed and dying, use the quick-working methods to save them and then move on to adding plants , additional filtration, or correcting over-loads.
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At Minnesota Waterscapes we rarely check the water parameters in a pond build with a filtration system that has been proven to work because we use the ecosystem method and have had fabulous results for 20+ years. We know and use quality materials, kits, and suggestions from Aquascape Inc. We love the easy results of the ecosystem pond method so much that we continue to be dedicated Master Certified Contractors. While we see many filtration methods that work, we follow proven methods with happy results!
