Importance of Oxygen in koi ponds during summer months
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July 17th 2004
The Water Gardens Gazette
1. Petsmart USA Catalog Now On Pond Professor's site
2. Oxygen in these summer months even more important
3. The Pond Professor's blog
4. Pond Filters, UV's & Pond Plants On Line
5. Admin section
1. Petsmart USA Catalog Now On Pond Professor's site
For quite sometime I have been working on compiling a complete catalogue of pond products that most of the visitors to my sites would find useful as well as being able to be sourced from a leading on-line supplier .... Petsmart USA . Many people have also asked me questions about aquarium and saltwater aquarium products. These too have therefore been included in the catalog ... although I do not claim to have any meaningful knowledge about aquariums at all. The same basic principle for pond keeping apply to aquariums but on a much smaller scale .... these three links below will take you to the catalog pages (prices in US Dollars but I cannot be held responsible for any price changes ... these were correct at time of finalizing the catalog entries on July 16).
Petsmart Pond supplies catalog
Petsmart Freshwater Aquarium supplies catalog
Petsmart Saltwater aquarium supplies
Apologies to readers in other countries including my own country's readers for not being able to compile similar information ... South Africa
2. Oxygen in these summer months even more important
My friend William Kelly gave me permission to publish his article on oxygen. Now that Summer is in full swing water temperatures are at their highest and pond activity is also peaking ... this includes the rate of growth of algae and algae consume oxygen in large quantities during the nightime hours.
Oxygen that is available in water to fish can only be accessed once it is dissolved in the water in which the fish live. Whilst water is a remarkable solvent, being able to dissolve almost anything, water can only contain about 9% dissolved oxygen. Compare this to the air that we breathe which comprises our external environment and in which the oxygen content is 21%.
Add this to the fact that water is 800 times denser than air and that oxygen dissolves into it very slowly and you can appreciate the efforts that fish have to go to in order to just get a decent breath! In the same way that we do, fish produce carbon dioxide as the by product of the respiration/metabolic processes.
Koi are no different to any other fish. Their food needs are similar to other animals in that they require fats, proteins, carbohydrates, minerals, vitamins etc. They have limited access to oxygen which means that they must use it as efficiently as possible.
Because they are in constant contact with water they also need to deal with the constant diffusion and osmotic processes that take place. Osmosis, the movement of water from a location of higher concentration to lower, requires energy. Energy requires oxygen. Imagine if a fish had to not only control this process, but also generate its own body heat. It simply could not get enough oxygen from its watery environment to make this feasible.
Water fortunately has a high resistance to temperature changes. It takes a lot of energy to heat water and relatively speaking water can hold its temperature in colder conditions for a lot longer than other substances of similar chemical composition.
What does happen as water temperature drops is that the metabolic processes in our Koi slow down. Conversely as the temperature rises, the metabolic processes speed up and in the case of Koi, feeding rates can get to impressive levels.
The gills of a fish are highly efficient oxygen extractors and the membrane separating the water from the blood supply is often only one cell thick. This is tiny and represents precious little protection for the fish in the event that things in the pond water turn nasty. In turn, anything that affects the gills of a fish can have devastating consequences.
The rule of diffusion is a critical one to understand properly when it comes to understanding the processes that happen in a Koi pond.
Simply put
Substances will diffuse from one area of greater concentration to an area of lesser concentration in an ongoing process until equilibrium is reached.
I suggest if this article maybe gave you cause for some concern then read more about what happens during a pond containing algae during the day and night ... click this link below
3. The Pond Professor's Blog
In May I started to collect some of the more interesting queries from readers and I posted those and at times my responses to those queries ... there are now quite a few useful tips and tricks here you may have an interest in viewing ... if you want you can bookmark the page to see when new entries are posted. The link to The Pond Professor's Blog is shown below
If you would like to post any information you believe readers would find to be useful just send me an email with the info and I will review it and possibly post it to this site.
By the way thanks to those readers who have been sending me photos of their ponds and gardens ... well done. Feel free to send but just warn me in the email to which you attach the photos that they are about ponds otherwise I might just delete them ... Use this email for POND PICTURES
4.The BEST low cost bio filter and UV equipment
Information on Alfagrog
Without getting too technical this means that 1 litre of Alfagrog can hold the
same amount of bacteria as 200 litres of plastic tubes. In other words a box
using plastic tubes needs to be 200 times bigger in volume than one containing
Alfagrog to get the same biological performance.
Alfagrog fantastic low cost biomedia ... buy here, search for SUPRA after clicking
Alfagrog looks a bit like cinders, it is lightweight, comes in different sizes and you can literally blow through it because it is so porous.
"The Complete Pond Solver" by Tony Roocroft
2004 Edition. Essential reading for anybody who wants or has a garden pond. Get 12 Excel pond calculators free as well as "Water Lilies and Pond Aquatics" ebook also free
Pond plants and pond supplies on line
Pond plants ... every garden pond should have some (even those small barrel ponds I discussed last time). Here are some suggestions for this season and where you can get them on line ... click the image banner below and then choose Water Plants once you get to home page
They have nice basic variety of water lilies for sale ... every pond should have a water lily or two. There is also a wide range of marginals too. Well worth a look Other plants available ... see the pictures at my web site by clicking the link not placed here to reduce download time
Fantastic Response after first alert to readers
NEW REPRINTED AND IMPROVED VERSION "The Perfect Pond Recipe Book" Unique DIY Book and Manual by Peter J May ... I am pleased to provide this space for Peter who has helped myself and my readers so much over the years. I fully endorse this book. I first got it around 1995.
"The Perfect Pond Recipe Book" is not just for those flat perfect bowling green situations. The techniques shown in my book enable you to put a pond or waterfall into any terrain.
Do take a closer look at Peter's book and information Click here and go to Perfect Pond Recipe Book Page
5. Permission To Publish and Admin section
Bona fide web masters and web site owners who have a genuine interest in helping people succeed in pond keeping are welcome to publish articles from these Gazettes subject to one simple condition. Please include in the opening to the article the following link. All you need do is copy these 2 lines of code and paste into your HTML
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All you need to know about water gardens, ponds, pumps, bio filters and UV lights
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Biofilters between 1,000 galls and 5,000 gallons capacity are claimed (no UV included) with Alfagrog ... 3 different sizes . Shipping was free and I think still is but check
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Biofilters between 1,000 galls and 5,000 gallons capacity are claimed with Alfagrog and UV included for algae free water 3 different sizes then click here to read review
MORE REVIEWS BELOW ... don't buy any new pond equipment until you have read these Pond Professor Price Intelligence Reports
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Its called bioaugmentation .. Microbe-Lift bacteria to keep ponds healthy
Go here to select the correct pump for your own pond or waterfall
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