Kasha Kat is totally right on with their response. Nitrates/Nitrites and Ammonia readings are all related to each other. Definitely check your Nitrates/Nitrites and Ammonia levels. Ammonia is released from from debris, fish waste and the gills from your fish - If you fish are coming and going through dormancy, then there will be increased use of the gills on your fish. Hence the increase in ammonia output. Ammonia will also affect the oxygen levels in your pond. Which is why your fish acting like they are not getting enough oxygen, because in reality they are not. The ammonia level has taken the oxygen out of the pond. Another thing about ammonia levels - your ph will affect the levels of ammonia in your pond. So a reading of .2 on your test indicators is pushed higher by the higher ph in your pond. This time of year is difficult, however, there are some microbe lift products that will work in cold water and the microbe lift will unlock the ammonia and release the oxygen levels in your pond almost immediately. I was very surprised to see how quickly this happened in my own pond. The microbe lift product that I used was the Spring/Summer clean up - I am not sure that would be the correct one to use for winter. The people at microbe lift are very helpful. Their # 1-800-809-7102. It will cost nothing to call and talk with them. I do believe it was mentioned here before - you want your ammonia levels at 0. This is critical as the elevated ammonia levels will kill your fish and I believe this is already happening in your pond. One other thing - somebody mentioned not feeding your fish - I am assuming when we have the freezes and thaws that you are not feeding your fish. You are in Southern Ohio, which is zone 5-6, which is about the zone I am in. I would think typically your start up would be Marchish with feeding starting when your water temps are consistently in the 50's, so that would be April/May, depending upon how early or late Spring occurs. Not sure if you can access my pond journals as I am typically on DG and that is where my journals are. But if you can, you will see in 2007 is where I had these problems although my problems occured in April. Good luck. Here is a link that might be useful: Microbe-Lift

Sam: Agree with you that biochar is low-level oxygen and slow-burning. Here's an excerpt from below link: "Without sophisticated kilns and ovens to produce modern biochar, this ancient material was likely made by setting alight a pile of organic material before covering it with dirt to eliminate oxygen but hold in the heat from the fire which, in turn, baked the organic matter. http://www.azocleantech.com/article.aspx?ArticleId=183 The above link is worth clicking, it shows vigorous plants grown with biochar, versus without. The reason why biochar is better than wood-ash? It's like cooking food with a slow-cooker (crock-pot), versus burning food on a hot fire. Slow-cooking retains more nutrients, versus LESS nutrients with fast burning & lots of oxygen. When my neighbor burned wood in a open-fire-pit, the heat was so intense that it converted our heavy-black-clay into reddish clay. Nutrients in foods are destroyed at high temp, same with wood-ash: less nutrients than biochar.

I remember last December here where we hit several days of single digit, sometimes teens, days and negative nights. Then Winter held on and Spring was very late. Maybe three years ago we had record snowfall. Usually we get snow and then our normal is for the higher coastal temps to melt most of the snow before the next storm comes. That year temps stayed so low all winter that little of the snow melted. People born and raised here said they had never seen such snow accumulation. Winter feels healthy here, and I love it. (Full disclosure: From the perspective of somebody who grew up in Alabama!) It could be that things are more erratic, but we definitely experience Winter!

Wow, just wow. I posted the above Art Gallery Expressionism in the browser I've been experimenting with, Slimjet. It is a high security browser with speed. I picked a random unshrunk picture, and when I went to post it, it gave me a message "do you want to shrink the picture to the optimum size for quick posting on Houzz?" I said yes, and it posted almost immediately, like the old days. Download, make default, import bookmarks and you are ready to go.Forget Chrome, Firefox, the Microsoft browsers, etc. https://www.slimjet.com/