seastar

My pond is 2 feet deep. I have a water lily and some Canna Lilies, and some other big leaf plant, but they do not offer much shade. The pond is in full sun most of the day. I have bio-balls in the filter that I rinse out with pond water, but the other filter media I hose it off. I am going to give the barley a try. Would any type of barley straw work, or is there a specific type. I have barley seeds from a farmer and I grew my own barley this summer. I wonder if that will work. Right now it is too soon to harvest it. I have lots of water movement, there are 2 fountains. I have a pond heater that keeps a hole open in the ice and I am going to keep an air pump going this winter. The biggest Koi is probably 3 years old. But the other two are a 1 year old and a 2 year old. I will bring in the youngest one. When I was in Wisconsin this summer there was a beautiful Koi pond in the park. The water was tinted an artificial light blue color, but crystal clear and clean. I read that the blue dye stops the sun from causing algae growth. It looked so much better than my green pea soup water. Does anyone know about the blue stuff to put in ponds? Thanks so much for all the advice, I really do appreciate it.

I need some help with my pond. I have been trying to keep the water clear but it is a thick green soup. I tried different kinds of chemicals, but nothing seems to work. All my fish are healthy. I only see them when they come to the surface to eat. I clean out the filter often. It is a large submersible filter. The pond is 300 gallons. And doing water changes does not seem to help. I have 1 medium size Koi, 2 small Koi and 3 small Goldfish. I am going to bring the goldfish in, but I want to leave the Koi out for the winter. I would like to have the water clean and healthy before freeze-up. I would appreciate any advice on how to get the water clear and keep it that way.

I just built a Betta set up in July to hold 10 male Bettas. I took a 33 gallon - long tank. I made dividers out of two screens used for reptile tank lids, these I used for the sides of the enclosure. Then I sewed a larger holed mesh across the bottom and up the two ends. I bought some black nylon screen from Home Depot and cut rectangle pieces and sewed them in as dividers. The dividers come to about an inch and a half above the water. The enclosure has two bars screwed across the top so it rests on the aquarium lip, and also two bars screwed across the bottom to keep it stable. The whole thing is an inch and a half smaller than the aquarium so there is lots of water flow. And it is about 5 inches from the bottom. I put a small bumblebee catfish at the bottom to eat the food that falls through the net bottom. And all the fish poop falls through the net bottom as well. I have regular gravel substrate. I put a small power filter at one end and a submersible filter at the other end. I do not have a lid over the tank, and no one has jumped out. They did flare up at each other at times but now they are getting used to each other. I was away for the month of August so I had to design something easy to care for because my daughter-in-law was looking after my fish. I just got back a few days ago and my fish are beautiful and healthy. I did a water change without taking the enclosure out and it was no problem. But I am going to have to get the whole thing out to do a gravel cleaning next week. It has worked out so well I am going to keep the fish in it. I designed it to be temporary while I was on holidays, but it has proven to be a real time saver for me. Now I do not have to clean out 10 little betta tanks, and the one large tank stays cleaner.

Yappy dogs work great. I have two of them and nothing comes in our yard without them sounding the alarm. We saw a large bird flying over our yard just after I put the Koi in the pond. I think it was a Heron, probably looking at my Koi for lunch. My dogs were out in the yard barking at squirrels, and we have not seen that bird since.

Congratulations!!!!! I was thinking about you all weekend, wondering how you were doing at he show. I am so happy for you, and PUFF too!!! Way to go, that is just so awesome!!!

Very interesting how the fry are growing. I did 2 spawns using the same male CT but different females, one week apart. Both in 5 gallon tanks with lots of Java moss and ivy leaf duck weed. The fry that are a week younger are 4 times larger than the others. The females are not that much different in size. All the babies are eating well and are healthy. I do regular water changes to both tanks. The fry that are bigger had quite a few hatch, but there are only three left. I think they ate the others. In the spawn tank with the older and smaller fry they are all the same size, and there are perhaps 7 to 10 or more. It is hard to count them because they are hidden in the plants. I feed them all fresh hatched brine shrimp and NLS ground up food that I sprinkle on the top of the water. It's a mystery to me why the younger ones are so very much smaller than the ones hatched a week later.

I bought some Canna Lilies, and put them in pond pots a week ago. There are leaves sprouting up already. Thanks Crystal for all your wonderful advice and ideas. I have to get a head start on summer - maybe the lilies will bloom this summer before they freeze up in September. I hope to be able to put the plants outside around the first of June. I was at Sunnyside yesterday. They have some pond plants in too, and lots more coming in this week. Hey Fishclubgirl - when I get my pond all up and running and the plants and fish in it, you are welcome to come over and see it. I think I might buy some Koi. I think they are so pretty. Can't wait for summer

I had many kinds of snails in the tank with my seastars. There are only two turban snails left and a few sand snails that hide in the substrate. The seastars have eaten about 20 snails. They do not seem interested in the hermit crabs or the little shore crabs. The seastars are awesome creatures. The big one is over 10 inches now.

Yes, I do. I live in N.W. Calgary. I collected daphnia last fall. I had many many containers going. There were lots of them. And there are no fish in this spot.

A couple of weeks ago I bought a female betta that was doing the same thing. She just stayed at the bottom of her tank. I had her in a hospital tank. I used a drop of Life Bearer in the water, and a little pinch of aquarium salt. Life Bearer is a Parasite killer. Within two days she was swimming a little bit more. Then the third day I noticed she was doing much better. And sometime that afternoon she jumped out of the hospital tank and landed on the floor, I did not find her until it was too late. She was in a 3/4 gallon hospital tank hanging inside a 20 gallon tank. There were other female bettas in the 20 gallon. She could see them and wanted to get in with them. She looked so weak I did not think I needed to put the lid on her tank. A hard lesson to learn. But I think she had some sort of parasite. I am finding that it is sooooo very important to quarantine all my newly purchased bettas for a week or two before putting them into the spawning tank. I almost lost one of my favorite half moon males on the weekend. He picked up a strange parasite - must have been from one of the females I put in with him. (He is the agressive male.) All of a sudden his dorsal fin got all stuck together. I used Life Bearer in his tank for two days and yesterday I did a complete water change and added Parasite Guard. Today I noticed some improvement.

Thanks for the info. It is nice to know that some are just too mean. I am going to retire him for now. I will always have room for him. He is one of my favorites. He is very friendly with humans. When someone goes near his tank he swims over and gets all wiggly, and wants to be fed. He is a young fish, perhaps I will wait a few months and let him mature, then give him another chance. But I will be OK with it if he does not change. He has quite the attitude problem. LOL

"YES - THAT'S IT...COUNSELING" or maybe I need the Counseling. Maybe I am spending tooooo much time with my Bettas...No I don't think so.

I have a really nice half moon male that I have tried to spawn with 4 different females. But I must say he is such a brat. He is too agressive with the females, almost killing them. The females were more than ready. But he just seems to chase them around and attacks them. So I put in a female that was much larger than he is, but by the next day he had bitten off a lot of her fins. I have lots of hiding places for the females, and they hide and won't come out. I do not know what to do with him. He builds a nice big nest and everything else seems just right.