Summer has arrived in Germany. High temperatures and lots of sunshine are not only tough on your plants and animals, your pond also suffers.
The water level can drop by up to several centimetres a day. This means it has to be refilled once a week at the latest. Unfortunately you can’t just wait avoid work by waiting for rain because rain water shouldn’t be used to fill up your pond. You can find more about this in this blog post: Heavy rain – watch your water values .
If you want to allow heavy rainfall to fill your pond you will definitely need to harden the water with StabiloPond basis.
We advise you to use mains water for filling. Well water or groundwater are also options but only after extensive water testing. If the water is too soft and low in mineral and trace elements or if it contains too high nutritional values and iron and manganese levels, it is not suited for filling your pond and can result in heavy algae growth. Well water from agricultural areas especially tend to contain high levels of nutrition.
If you have groundwater or well water you can use, test its values thoroughly in advance, e.g. with the JBL PROAQUATEST LAB Koi . The following values need to be taken into account and are listed with the following recommendations in the brackets:
- pH (7.5 – 8.5)
- KH (> 4)
- NO2 (<0.01)
- NH4 (<0.05)
- GH (> 4)
- NO3 (< 0.5)
- PO4 (< 0.05)
- Fe (<0.02)
If you can’t find a suitable water source which meets all these requirements, use those which are low in pH, KH and GH and harden the water with JBL StabiloPond Basis .
A final tip: The growth of aquatic plants and bacterial activities results in a steady decline in carbonate hardness. Check the stability of your pond water with the JBL PROAQUATEST POND Check pH/KH once a week.
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