Chicken Coup

It does not matter where you live, I am sure that you have storms at some time of the year. In the north of the northern hemisphere, we tend to get lots of rain in winter and spring. In the tropics, there may be monsoons. Whatever you call them, they give off lots of wind and lots of rain in a short space of time – it is basically a storm.

The fact is that, if you know that a storm is approaching, you can take precautions and save your precious fish, whether they are expensive or just dear to you. It might be useful to distinguish between minor and major storms, but that is only helpful if you can trust your meteorologist.

Minor Storms: the first thing to do is to stop feeding your fish, if you have enough notice of the storm. Fish can easily live for weeks on the insects and plant life in the water, so do not be concerned. The reason for stopping feeding is that if the storm damages your filtration system, the quality of the pond water will not deteriorate so much, if there is no uneaten food in it.

Take out some of the water to allow for the rainfall, but do a partial water change too, because otherwise the reduced water level will contain greater levels of toxins until the rain comes.

Remove items from the vicinity that can blow over and fall into your pond. It is a good idea to put a net over the pond to prevent debris being blown into it too. Flying twigs or branches could alarm or even spear your fish.

Major Storms: we are not talking about hurricanes here. If a hurricane threatens to hit, you ought to remove your fish to a temporary tank somewhere safe – maybe a 50 gallon barrel in the basement or somewhere like that.

If you want to be completely certain that your fish will be ok, you could ask your local pet shop to take them away to look after them otherwise proceed as for a minor storm but with the following extra safety measures.

Disconnect all the electrical equipment in and around your fish pond. Make sure that there is no way that a live wire can fall into the pond and electrocute your fish. Remove all the plants from your pond as they could be damaged by the wind and waves, but leave any stone hiding places that your fish will surely look for while the storm is blowing. If you think that perhaps you do not have enough ‘caves’, build some provisional ones from bricks or blocks.

Put a double layer of netting over your pond and tie it lower down than normal, say only a few inches above the water line, but not so low that if a fish gets out, it cannot get back in. Finally, build a wall of sand bags at least two feet high all the way around your pond. This will permit the water to get in and drain away, without taking your fish with it, which is why the net must be high enough to allow the fish to get back into the pond.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on many topics, but is now concerned with water garden pumps. If you are interested in a Solar Powered Pond Pump, please go to our web site now for a great deal.

The number one concern of every fish keeper, whether it be a pond or a tank is water quality. You need to spend some time and some money every month, looking after the properties of the water in your fish tank or pond. In fact, it is a lot cheaper in terms of time, money and stress to preserve a good quality of water than it is to correct water once you have let it go wrong.

Your filtration system is your number one tool in the struggle to preserve good quality water. A good filtration device consists of two facets: mechanical and biological. The mechanical aspect removes the physical waste and debris that builds up in any body of water, especially one that has fish in it.

The mechanical filtration system has to be of a size that it can deal with the volume of water that you have. A pump will draw up the water and pass it through a filter and the clean water, ie minus leaves, algae and faeces, returns to the pond via a waterfall, which also aids aeration.

The biological filtration system will deal with waste that has already dissolved into the water in the form of nitrogen. if you do not release this nitrogen, by initiating a nitrogen cycle, it will build up and change itself into ammonia, which will kill your fish in a matter of days. This nitrogen cycle is essential.

Just think about it, your fish are living, breathing, eating and sleeping in their toilet bowl, so unless you keep their environment sanitary, they will poison themselves. A river, their natural environment, is continuously being flushed into the sea and renewed with rain. You have to reproduce that environment if you want to keep healthy fish.

A good rule of thumb is, if you can see the bottom of your pond, then you are probably doing all right, but do not rest on your laurels. First time pond owners often make the mistake of over-feeding. That excess food becomes waste and has to be removed or it will feed the growth of algae.

Do not forget that, if your fish live outside, they will be eating flies, grubs and larvae so they can fairly happily go without a feed for a few weeks. That does not mean that you do not need to feed them, it just means take care. Feed more in the summer than in the winter, because your fish will become semi-dormant in the winter.

Quarantine your new fish to make sure that you do not pass on illnesses. For instance, the koi herpes virus develops at precisely 74F, so if you heat a tank to that temperature with your new fish in it, you will know whether they are safe to put in the pond or not. During this quarantine stage, you must not share implements with your pond and your tank or you run the risk of cross-contaminating your pond.

Koi can be costly, so when you are setting up your first fish pond, you may like to stock it with goldfish instead until you get the drift of things. Later on, you can add koi carp as they will happily reside side-by-side.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on many topics, but is now concerned with water garden pumps. If you are interested in a Solar Powered Pond Pump, please go to our web site now for a great deal.

Do you have a garden pond? Or would you like one? A garden pond or a water garden does not have to be large to completely change how you use your garden. The sound of running water is so relaxing and a pond fountain or a waterfall can have a cooling effect on a hot summer’s day. Watching the fish carry out their daily lives is relaxing too and many gardeners like the chance to branch out into the new kingdom of aquatic plants.

If your pond is sunk into the earth, your could watch it from above or you could build it above ground and use perspex windows to watch your fish on their own level. Your fish will breed too, so you will have a new, perfect, ecosystem in your own garden.

Choose the site of your pond with care. Try to position it on slightly higher ground, so that it is not flooded with all your garden’s rainwater in the course of heavy rains. Be wary of putting your pond under a tree or you will forever be raking leaves out of the water, which is a real nuisance. Putting your pond in a location where it is in at least partial shade when the sun is high will also help reduce on algae growth.

However, once the contractor has created your pond and you have stocked it, is the time when your work begins. Perhaps not work, possibly you will take pleasure in maintaining your fish and your fish pond. This is not hard and a largish pond will need hardly any maintenance at all, most of it can be mechanized.

One of the first things that you will have to try to do is stop your garden falling into the pond. You do not want surrounding mud dropping into the pond and literally muddying the water. This can be achieved by lining your pond with a butyl pond liner and lapping the liner up over the lip of the pond by a foot or two.

Then you have to hold that in place. This can be done to suit your taste, but many people put a stone or brick walkway around the pond. If you let this overhang the pond by an inch or two, you will almost totally hide the pond liner.

The majority of people overfeed their fish, because fish outdoor will find a lot of natural food such as flies, larvae and grubs. This surplus food turns into a surplus of nutrients. This super-charged water is a perfect environment for algae, and algae is going to be your permanent enemy. However, you can soak up some of these surplus nutrients with other plants that you like.

Aquatic plants such as lilies really make a pond and they will help aerate the water during the day when the water may be warmer (warm water holds less oxygen than cool water). Plants also give your fish somewhere to hide from predators and strong sunlight, which will diminish stress on your fish as well.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many topics, but is now concerned with water garden pumps. If you are interested in a Solar Powered Pond Pump, please go to our web site now for a great deal.