Thread: Advise needed please

Hi All Jim here, new to the forum but looking for some advise please.

Some Context

I love fish keeping have had ponds or tanks my whole life since childhood. Goldfish or guppies mainly.

We moved two years ago into a property that had a much larger pond 20,000l we had a much smaller goldfish pond at our old house. Me excited got some koi when we moved in. Two years ago and have been youtube learning since then.

In March of this year i brought quite a few expensive fish to add to the pond. It went wrong i introduced ich to the pond and the fish were dying including the orginals.

So after more research i started saving up for this time of year to get some filters, pumps and tanks for a polytunnel in the meantime. this was because I wanted a quarantine tank 2700L, a hospital tank 1000l and a heated grow on tank 2700l to ensure nothing like this ever happen again.

Everything was set up and my plan was to add 100 small fish to grow out in the heater tank, to choose my favourite to add to my pond. i got carried away and ordered 7 large fish for the quarantine tank i had planed on just 3.

I just can not seem to keep my water lvls stable. I have been adding rain water during water changes through a filter system all lvls absolutely fine. I believe i am suffering from new pond syndrome.

The grow on tank with the small fish seems to be absolute fine its the other tank i cant seem to get right.

I have been using chat gpt to help me analyse things but everyday its telling me to do water changes and i just dont think thats right so need to talk to some experts.

I live in the sticks of west wales and did try to find a club. I messaged one that was about 90 minutes away and got no reply so assume its not going anymore so I have no one to get real experience from and that all leads me to my questions here, really hoping i can future my understanding more.

This mornings readings on the ponds

a quarantine tank - NO2 (Nitrite): High, around 2 ppm (dark pink)
NH3 (Ammonia): 0.1 ppm
pH: 7.8
KH: 80 ppm
GH: 100 ppm
NO3 (Nitrate): 80 ppm

Grow on tank -

NO2 (Nitrite): Trace to noneNH3 (Ammonia): 0.1 ppm
pH: 7
KH: 100 ppm
GH: 120 ppm
NO3 (Nitrate): 15 ppm



How to i deal with new pond syndrome?

When should i do water changes?

What readings should i be doing a water change? like how high is nitrate intolerable?

Really appreciate all advise / insights or even pointing in the direction of videos, threads anything that covers this.

Am really worried and stressing about these lvls. am not feeding the quarantine tank

I do have a salinity meter arriving today. I had ordered one but it didnt work on arrival so is being replaced.


My current plan is to raise salt to 0.3 to help the fish with the nitrates.

many thanks

Jim

hi
if you put where you live someone may be able to come round.
goggle Manky sanke site sit down with a cup of tea and ready through his site.

keith

thanks Keith will do, I'm not to far from cardigan in West Wales!

What about that kind of teaching approach to beginners?
In Japan, there is absolutely no practice of such water quality testing.
As I have said many times before, the practice of always worrying about Ph and Kh and keeping them within these limits seems to be the norm in the aquarium world, but it is not at all widespread here among KOI keepers.
mesuring ph kh
mesuring Nitrite

So what exactly do we care about?
Swimming and movement of the KOI itself, feeding behaviour and associated changes in pond water and body surface. The changes in body shape due to continuous feeding.
Talk about essential of KOI = Controlling feeding habits

The recent introduction of AI functions will help us to understand what we are usually looking for and what we are pursuing if we put automatic generation and translation to the test.
Here you will find top breeders like Kentaro Sakai to novice hobbyists who are just starting out, but none of them have a test kit in their hands or even a microscope.
Instead, everyone takes seriously the small changes in KOI's daily life, which they compare and study, and reflect in their husbandry.
I had thought that we Japanese might not have any affinity with the British, but some carp farmers, not KOI, talk about similar things to us, and I feel close to them.

It wasn't that bad 30 years ago when I was over there. When did the practice of keeping aquariums become so widespread and commonplace?
If there is something to be gained from measuring water quality, which I don't deny, is there any progress to be made with the data?

The more novice you are, the more you will definitely improve your KOI husbandry if you follow the Japanese method of being more observant of the KOI themselves and not overlooking even the slightest change.

I may have missed it in the original post but what’s the timeline of the setup of the new tanks? Sounds like at least one hasn’t actually cycled yet?

As mentioned above I also wouldn’t rely on rainwater for water changes, it’s often acidic-I recently had a ph crash after very heavy downpours presumably caused by the acidity of the rain


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