Water garden calendar, August

So what should you have been doing in the water garden in August?

In the UK most books will tell you sit back and relax and enjoy the fruits of your labour, but it can get so hot in the UK year that any mismanagement of the water garden will come back to haunt the owners. Over feeding and over stocking becomes apparent when the fish are gasping for oxygen in the warm water. Water cannot absorb oxygen so readily at warmer temperatures. If there is overfeeding and fish food rotting on the bottom of the pool, a vicious cycle of ammonia production starts up as it begins to rot. Any ammonia in the water is bad news, especially for Koi carp, for which ammonia is a deadly poison. The problem is that they exude ammonia as a waste product through their anus and their gills. They do this more when they are stressed, and what is more, the presence of ammonia makes them stressed, overcrowding makes them stressed and lack of oxygen makes them stressed, so once ammonia levels start to build up you can very quickly be in a snowball situation. Lack of oxygen also slows down the activity of the essential bacteria in the bottom of the pool as well as in the biological filters that are capable of breaking down the ammonia, and so the production of the poison goes on unchecked.

Resort to the emergency remedy or a one third water change, or blasting fresh water in from high up.

Keep fountains and waterfalls running at night.

Hopefully the friends you had looking after the pool when you were on vacation didnt over feed the fish, otherwise there is a biological time bomb in the bottom of the pool. They should have given the rascals just enough that they could consume in 5 minutes and then net off the excess.

N.B. Red leg in frogs thrives in water low in oxygen and high in organic matter.