Eddio

I would have gotten a bunch, but feeders here arn't very cheap..I paid 13bucks for the 12 that i got..so spending hundreds on them is out of the question. Nows a good as time as any to update a bit. I took the 11 out of their 15 gal and put them into a largish heavy duty plastic container on the deck two days ago. It's in the sun for most of the day and i put the HOB filter out there too. Went out this morning and the filter was just dribbling water, and it turns out one of the smaller ones was stuck in the intake not sure if he died cause of the cold, or got sucked in alive. But now we'r down to 10. I'm keeping them on the deck for a couple weeks to give them time to adjust to being in much colder water. And for those of you wondering why I don't just throw them in there..It's cause my bf is kinda leery about the whole thing..So any degradation in the quality of water is going to be directly blamed on my 10 fish. So i'm bein extra careful that they stay alive and I'm allowed to put more in there later on. You should visit the city sometime and just stock up on feeders, I mean they're like 10 cents each or something.

I wish I had a pond that big in my backyard! Keep us updated

There's not much you can do to prevent nitrates from going up other than doing your water changes. But don't become too obsessive in that as pH balance is very important for smaller fish (pH measured in log scale, tiny change on the scale would be detrimental). Maybe try adding some potted plants, can give your fish some cover and help soak up the nitrogenous compounds. But I seriously wouldn't worry too much about a nitrate spike, as long as ammonia and nitrite is 0.