Maidenhead Aquatics Topical Tips - March 2010

 

With longer days filled with weak but optimistic sunshine, its time to think of spring. It may seem like only yesterday that we were celebrating New Year and then before you know what’s happened, it’s Easter.

Outdoors

If you’ve followed our seasonal tips through the winter then your fish should be in good shape and ready to face the warming conditions. Make sure you’re using a good low-temperature food and the rest is easy but be careful of potential water quality issues later in the month if we have a Mild March. Whether you’ve left your filtration running over winter or not, the bacteria that make the whole system work can be slow to feed and reproduce in the cold conditions. As they are the secret to keeping unhealthy fish waste under control, it pays to treat them well – even if they are just germs!

A pond pump is very much the heart of a life support system for your fish and sends oxygen and nutrients around the filter and the pool. To ensure you have a clean bill of health, service your pump thoroughly so that it can perform at its best. Most pumps differ very little in design and will normally have a magnetic impellor sitting in a recessed well which may house a metal or ceramic shaft on which it spins. The gapping of this impellor is usually a very finely engineered space which is easily clogged by limescale and biofilm and this can be compared to running your car engine without oil. Protect your pump by using a fish-safe de-scaling agent and it will run for years. If you’re buying a new pump, make sure you look at current consumption, as many bargains can quickly cost more than their initial purchase price once electricity costs are added, especially as this piece of equipment will be running 24 hours a day for much of the year.

Once you have your pump in good working order, carefully inspect pipe work for damage and leaks. Even a minor drip can be a source of considerable water loss if a large volume of water is passing through the joint or hose concerned. Although most grades of hosing are designed to resist the suns rays, prolonged exposure can cause hosing to become brittle and liable to leak – particularly at sharp curves or slightly stretched angles. Check also that any hose clips are in good order, as you may have to remove or replace a component part of the pond plumbing at short notice.

Ultra-violet units can also have their annual service now and items such as lamps and sealing rings are best replaced at the beginning of each pond season. The delicate quartz glass sleeve that protects the lamp from the pond water is also liable to attract limescale and can be cleaned using similar products to those required by the pump. It should be noted that if the quartz sleeve is allowed to become cloudy and opaque, it will prevent the ultra violet light from killing the green water algae effectively. This is why the sleeve has to be made of the more expensive and fragile quartz as normal glass prevents the passage of UV rays.

Biological filters can be brought back into service as the temperatures rise but make sure that any water that has been sat in a static filter is flushed away before being added to the pond, as without a flow of oxygen-rich water through the media, harmful pollutants can build up. Filter bacteria will be slow to get to work in cold conditions and it is a good idea to add a filter boosting product to boost bacterial populations once things start to warm up. This will ensure a quick return to normal efficiency once the fishes start feeding again and producing potentially harmful waste products. 

For water gardeners taking a more holistic approach now is a good time to start adding remedies such as barley straw extracts and phosphate removing blanketweed controllers. Bright sunshine in early spring can be a boon to algae growth at a time when the pond plants are growing too slowly to compete for nutrients. An algae bloom will often result and will normally be controlled when the higher plants get into their stride. You can help tip the balance by adding fast-growing oxygenating plants but make sure that these are chosen wisely, as many of the traditional choices for this task are now among species classed as ‘invasive aliens’ by organisations that are fighting to control them in the open countryside. Remember, any plant material taken from your garden pond should be composted or disposed of responsibly.

With the light mornings come one of the wildest of native birds that visits our gardens and whether you welcome them or not, the quiet dawns in back gardens are now ideal for herons. Normally wary of people, these elegant but undeniably big and hungry fish-eating birds can surprise many pond owners when they fly off in response to the curtains opening. A decoy heron can be an effective deterrent if thrown accurately but a cover net or more sophisticated scaring device is a much more effective counter measure. If it’s any consolation, my neighbourhood bird much prefers the frogs from my wildlife pond to the faster and more wary goldfish next door - another good reason to make space for a wildlife pond.

Our native amphibians are normally starting to become more conspicuous at this time of year, for more on frogs see last month’s tips. I may bore you with more on toads and newts next time!

If you’re tempted to add new fishes to your pond be very careful at this time of year. Many of our shop systems will be as cold, if not colder than your pond but due to the sluggish immune systems of the fish at this time of year it may be better to wait until conditions improve next month. For many people Easter means a multitude of things but for us fishkeeping folk it marks the beginning of the pond season. Things get much busier next month…

Indoors

Depending on how your aquarium is positioned, this month can be a time when the low spring sun shines directly into your aquarium. If this is the case, you may be tempted to duplicate the effect of that brighter lighting and after all, posh lighting effects shouldn’t be reserved for people keeping corals. Adding one of the new generation compact LED lamps to your aquarium can give a terrifically natural look and give the ‘glitter lines’ that really bring an aquarium to life. Extra lighting can have enormous benefits for aquarium plants and if you fancy trying your hand at reproducing the underwater landscapes that feature light-hungry foreground plants or those with red leaves, strong lighting is a must.

If extra sunshine causes algae blooms, then it’s time to investigate the reason why. Normally, excessive algae growth can be traced to a build up of nutrients such as phosphate or nitrate that are a terrific food source for algae. Test your water to see what your levels are and then take the appropriate action, such as increasing the frequency of water changes or adding a phosphate removing filter medium to your filter.

While we’re on the subject of water testing, I was pleased to see that the launch of our own line of Refractometers means that more accurate salinity measurement is within the budget of more marine keepers. With clear instructions (unlike some of the units I’ve encountered) these units will show you how unreliable some of the other means of testing salt levels can be. After all you don’t have to be Peter Snow to know that the accuracy of a swinging needle can go up as well as down…

Following our recent visit to Indonesia, we can reveal that among the delights that lay in store were some very exciting new fish. One of our exclusive breeders is working hard to raise the profile of some of the species from the threatened habitats of Sulawesi such as the Black Goby Mugilogobius sarasinorum found alongside many popular shrimp and a few other gems that should become available later in the year once stocks of tank-bred fish reach saleable numbers.