I’ve been keeping koi (keeping water) for over 10 years and still learnt something watching this. We seem to have high pH in the uk at the minute and everyone is scratching their heads as to what to do. Thanks for this. Really helpful and will definitely be sharing with other hobbiest
Absolutely brilliant explanation, very easy to follow and understand. Also good to see Jeff make a mistake or two, we all make them when testing the water quality. Finally, the Acidity & Alkalinity and how to deal with spikes or drops... Brilliant. Thanks Jeff 🤔👍
Excellent video and well explained. I now know why my new 1000 gallon Koi pond is not cycling. Alkalinity in our city water is zero! Have no issues with my 125 gallon tank with many fish for over 40 years using trickle filter system, and never had any issues in my older broken down koi pond that was about 150 gallons outside, but all that was established. Now hoping to get the cycle going and bacteria growing since I have now added the baking soda up to about 90ppm. The Ammonia test kit has been at .25 to .50 for 3 weeks now and figured out my city water is exactly the same as they use Chloramine. Using a lot of Prime and adding bacteria for ponds as well as added lots of ceramic media and some gravel on the bottom. Hoping I will see results soon now. I had never heard of zero or low alkalinity was detrimental to the bacteria. All my other tanks over the years have near zero alkalinity and no issues, so not sure why they are not an issue. PH stays at 7.0 and GH is about 60ppm.
Thank you for the video. I bought one of your test kit. I try to test the ‘Alkalinity”. I get my pond water and put in 5 drops of R-0008 and it turn ‘Fuchsia’ and I have not put any R-0009. Please tell me what wrong with my pond water. Thank you 🙏
Since the test turned fuchsia before you added any of the R-0009 solution, then this would mean that your alkalinity is 0 ppm. You will want to add enough backing soda to bring it up to 120 ppm and then retest your water.
Question for you- Do these water quality parameters apply to outdoor ponds during the winter also? If beneficial bacteria are not active yet in cold water, and the water has low ph and low alkalinity, is this ok? At what point do you want to make adjustments or reach ideal parameters?
Hi there. As we had mentioned in the video, although ideal alkalinity should be at 120 ppm, you can go as high as 300 ppm with no real health concerns for your koi. Your alkalinity of 190 ppm is just fine. However, if you would like to bring it down, you can use a little bit of Muriatic Acid to lower it. Be aware that this will also start to bring down your pH, so you may want to have some baking soda on hand in case you bring the pH down to far.