Water chemistry, new pond, new ponder

Rob,

Chloramine is a blend of ammonia and chlorine. If you treat only for the
chlorine, then there is ammonia left over. This is not necessarily bad,
since the filter will consume it, in an established pond. For complete
water fills, I recommend a chloramine treatment, such as Amquel, but for 10%
water changes and the like, a chlorine treatment is sufficient, unless the
filter has not cycled, and the pond is full of ammonia.

As for tests, I like the Aquarium Pharmaceuticals brands. They don't really
have a kit that tests everything. Most important is ammonia and nitrIte,
since these can get very high during the startup of the filters, or with the
addition of large numbers of fish at a time. These will kill fish. A lot
of people like a pH test kit, but I think the KH Carbonate Hardness test is
more important. If the carbonate hardness is above 80, the pH will be
stable, probably something over 8 and the fish will be happy with it being
stable. People sometimes freak out over the pH not being down at around 7.
GH or General Hardness is nice to know, but after it is run once or twice,
unless you are having to add calcium to get the numbers up, the test isn't
that important. Salt Test is very important if you have to treat any
ailments, since the best treatment is salt. Salt will also allow you to
back calculate the actual volume of water in the pond. If the pond has
plenty of plants, the NitrAtes should be low, but in a pond without plants,
the nitrAtes can build up and the pond needs major water changes to reduce
the levels. The NitrAte test is beneficial in knowing if water changes are
required, though most will recommend a 10% water change a week regardless.
--
RichToyBox
http://www.geocities.com/richtoybox/index.html

"Rob" wrote in message
om...
Oh, I'm an excited new ponder. After a month of recovering from a
back injury (due to digging out my 400 gallon pond!), I put in the
liner & water, ran the electricity and turned on the pump. The short
waterfall with small veggie filters isn't running yet, but the pump
pushes the water through the Oase pressurized filter. No koi planned,
just goldfish and hopefully frogs.

Questions: I live in San Francisco, where we have chloramine in the
water. What do I use to counteract it? Can you recommend a good
water testing kit? How often should I test? If I add more water to
compensate for evaporation, do I need to add more chems to nix the
chloramine? How long before I could add fauna?

Thanks...