Susan I think chemicals are bad for your pond and I have been ponding for many years. I don't know what Microbe Life or GreenClean contain so I am not sure if they are harmful. But the best way to keep a pond healthy and happy is to keep if free from debris that settles on the bottom, filter the water and make sure it has lots of oxygen. If you don't want to add filtration the concentrate on debris removal and water changes. There are so many ways to filter your pond. Many people vacuum the pond bottom, some use retro-fit bottom drains to keep the bottom clean and those who are newly installing a pond will include a bottom drain to their ponds. Filtering the pond is important to keep maintenance at a minimun. You need to remove as much debris as possible with a good filter and make sure you have biological filtration as well. For example I have two circuits of filtration. My skimmer has a 57 watt UV light and all the water that is drawn from the surface goes to a big DIY filter that uses foam, plants and Savio springflow to help with the mechanical filtation and the biofiltration. My bottom drain goes to a settling pond in which the debris settles to the another small pond and it is cleaned out a few times a year. Since your pond is concrete then a retro-fit bottom drain could help. But vacuuming would work as well. When I first started out ponding I would vacuum my pond with a pump that I held with a small rope. I used that and a net to get out debis. Very low tech but worked well. I would then add fresh water to replace what I had taken out. Years go by and I have experimented with underground filters, Bead filters and DIY filters. When I rebuilt the pond (a few times I admit) the bottom drain attached to a seperate pond made maintenance much easier. So you just need to find the type of filtration that suits your needs. At the very least keep the bottom clean and do some water changes during the season. This is a very simple way to keep your pond healthy. Also the catfish will not hurt your fish. When I had my catfish he co-exsisted very well with the Koi. RIP Wayne. Lisa

There are many ways to run a pond, each person has to decide for themselves. The dirt in the water is a tough one because it depends on the kind of dirt. Some will settle right away, some will stay cloudy for a long time. It will most likely settle at some point in the future. Tomorrow, next week, next year, no way to tell. There is also the question of what "clear" means to you. What one person considers clear another person would not. If it were me, unless water was being rationed or really expensive I'd dump the water and start over. You will have plenty of other issues, no sense adding to that list. Chalk it up to learning. I don't think there would be any problem adding fish to a pond that's cloudy from dirt. There's a small issue of the fish getting grit in their gills, but I think that concern is way over hyped. Grit settles. What stays suspended is clay and Koi live in mud ponds all the time. There are endless products being sold to clear the water. All are scams. Some actually could work, like flocculants. These are used in waste treatment plants. But in order to truely work 3 steps are needed. 1. Pour in the flocculant. 2. Apply extreme agitation to get the bits to clump into large enough clumps for the next step. 3. Removal of clumps using a fairly sophisticated filter. Pond flocculant products being sold don't talk about steps 2 & 3 of course. So people buy the product, which is the only step the seller really cares about, pour it in and it often makes things worst or if the pond does clear it's only temporary because the polymers in flocculants break down pretty fast and the clumped dirt goes back to being dirt. Virtually all pond products work that way. Part truth with a lot of scam. Sellers don't worry about repeat business because only people new to ponds buy these products. "Benefical bacteria" same deal. Most are completely worthless. There are a few that may sometimes contain some actual benefical bacteria and in a few cases can help. For example say you were about to add 20 full grown Koi to your 2100 gal pond. In that case you'd expect ammonia problems right away so trying to get bacteria working fast would save you some work in the next couple of weeks. But if you're like most people you're going to add a small number of very small fish which won't create an ammonia problem. You already have benefical bacteria in your pond, they're everywhere. They reproduce to fit the environment. Right now there's almost no ammonia for them to eat, so they just sit around watching Oprah all day. As soon as there's more ammonia they start eating and reproducing. Adding more bacteria to a pond that doesn't have the food (ammonia) available does nothing but add waste to the pond. If you really want to create more bacteria before adding fish you can do that by adding ammonia, plain ammonia from the drug store, to your pond. Use your ammonia test kit to get it up to some reasonable level, say 2ppm. Then use your test kit to to measure ammonia dropping, and maybe nitrite climbing and then falling. Takes about a week for the ammonia to go, nitrite can take longer if you measure any. Ammonia is also a food for algae so doing this really requires a UV filter to stop algae from sucking up all the ammonia as fast as you can put it in. Or, just add a few small fish at a time and let them produce the ammonia for the bacteria. Simple as pie. Local pond store guys are the worst pond keepers on the planet. They have to be. Water Gardens are very easy to run and require almost nothing be added. No pond store could stay in business based on that. So they make a living selling stuff no one needs. I have seen a few good pond stores that made most of their money selling good quality Koi and useful products like liner and high end filters. But those are rare. Adding salt to a pond is done by some people, not a lot. Whether it's a benefit is inconclusive in my book. The biggest problem I have with it is what do you do with waste water. Dump it on your lawn? Over time that probably isn't going to be good. Most cities have laws against sending down a storm drain or sewer. With no clear benefit I say who needs the hassle. And it takes a lot of salt to raise a 2100 gal pond to a level that matters. I'm guessing the pond guy sold you like a few pounds of sea salt flown in from the Black Sea or something. Regular water softer salt from the hardware store is all that's needed if you chose to go that route. $5 for a 40 lb bag. I'm guessing the pond store guy's salt costs a lot more. Salt is salt.

Hi there I am new on here but have found the info valuable so far so thanks to all. I think we have just made a HUGE mistake with our new pond. We originally dug a pond 6ft by 9 ft by 2ft deep and kept seven goldfish in it which wintered well and seemed happy. Being bitten by the fishkeeping bug we then dug a larger pond on the raised area above the original pond which is 15ft by 20ft but we miscalculated the depth. We originally planned 2ft 6" but when it was filled we realised it was less than two feet deep. By this time we had moved the fish into place and have been given two smalll koi and three Golden orfe along with another bucket full of goldfish so 29 in all. The water surface is plentiful but i am worried about the lack of depth. We have a large rubber liner in it which is now trimmed to size and rocked over and planted out around the edges. so to change this would mean a complete redig. Has anybody any ideas whereas we could cut the middle out of the liner and dig the middle bit a lot deeper then join on a new piece of liner? I think this could be an option. I dont want unhappy fish but my husband is groaning at the thought of rebuilding the whole thing.!

Hi. Can you give me the dimensions of your pond? Length, width, depth. Approximate is fine. Koi CAN get up to 3 feet long if given everything they need. Both koi and goldfish breed worse than rabbits. So be prepared to find homes for babies. Ideally when adding new fish to a pond they should be kept in a quarantine tank/pond for at least 3o days before adding to your existing pond. BUT most people don't want to wait that long. Quarantining your new fish helps prevent bringing any parasites to the pond and possibly killing your existing fish and prevent you having to spend a bunch of money on meds to rid your fish of the parasites. Now for the fish in the bucket. I hope they are not still in that bucket now. If so I hope you have a filter and air for them. If you want to keep your fish healthy and happy please get a fresh water test kit and test your water. At minimum you will want tests for Ammonia, PH, Nitrites. There are other test available : KH , GH, Nitrates, salt, ....Those are basics. Ammonia should always be zero PH between 7-8 Nitrites 0 Sorry, I could ramble on all day about the world of ponds, koi & goldfish. If you have more questions just let me know.