When the rain becomes an acid test

You can be sure of one thing in spring: rain. In the time period before Easter there can be rainfall of 40 to 60 litres per square metre. We would like to explain why this can become an acid test for your pond and possibly also a problem for your fish.

There are a lot of different minerals dissolved in your pond water. These are consumed by biological processes (e.g. nitrification) by your fish (e.g. mineral consumption), the plants (e.g. biogenic decalcification) and algae (mineral consumption). Frequent and heavy rain, which is softened pure water (KH = 0), leads to a dilution effect. This causes the KH in your pond to sink steadily.

A significant amount of the minerals responsible for the stability of the water can be measured with the carbonate hardness (KH). The KH stabilises the pH value and ensures that this is subject to only slight fluctuations.

Why is this important? The fish in the garden pond’s mucous membrane tolerates a pH value between 7.5 and 8.5. If this starts to fluctuate, and in extreme cases this can be by about 4.0 in 24 hours to over pH 10.0, the fish is exposed to stress and the mucous membranes can become severely irritated. You know this effect when biting into a lemon. To avoid these fluctuations and to protect the fish, a carbonate hardness of 4 ° dKH and higher has been proven to be good. With this value the pH level stabilises within the range mentioned above.

How to test the KH in your pond

With a simple colour change test you can determine the stability of your pond water in less than one minute. On the left of your colour chart you can see whether the carbonate hardness is available in sufficient amounts (blue colour indication) and on the right hand side you can interpret the measurement results you have obtained for the pH value, following the traffic light colour scheme of red/yellow/green. You don’t need to be a biologist or a chemist to do that!

So test your pond water every 2-3 weeks, every week in frequent rainfall, with the JBL PROAQUATEST POND Check pH/KH .

What to do, when the KH is lower than 4 °dKH?

Have you discovered that the carbonate hardness is lower than 4 °dKH or that the pH level is outside the normal range? Then you could carry out a big water change (min. 50%), but this is scarcely possible or affordable with a pond. It is quicker and more reliable to add the missing minerals by JBL StabiloPond Basis , especially to raise the KH and thus to stabilise the pH level again.

Can you also add JBL StabiloPond KH for this purpose? In principle this is possible. But we have modified the product specifically for use when pretreating the water the evening before an algae treatment, especially to raise the KH.

© 05.03.2016
Matthias Wiesensee
Matthias Wiesensee
M.Sc. Wirtschaftsinformatik

Social Media, Online Marketing, Homepage, Kundenservice, Problemlöser, Fotografie, Blogger, Tauchen, Inlineskating, Aquaristik, Gartenteich, Reisen, Technik, Elektronische Musik

About me: Seit Teenagerzeiten mit Aquarien in Kontakt. Klassische Fischaquarien, reine Pflanzenaquarien bis hin zum Aquascape. Aber auch ein Gartenteich und Riffaquarien begleiten mich privat im Hobby. Als Wirtschaftsinformatiker, M.Sc. bin ich als Online Marketing Manager bei JBL für die Bereiche Social Media, Webentwicklung und der Kommunikation mit dem Anwender der JBL Produkte zuständig und kenne die JBL Produkte im Detail.

Comments

A word about cookies before we continue

The JBL Homepage also uses several types of cookies to provide you with full functionality and many services: We require technical and functional cookies to ensure that everything works when you visit this website. We also use cookies for marketing purposes. This ensures that we recognise you when you visit our extensive site again, that we can measure the success of our campaigns and that the personalisation cookies allow us to address you individually and directly, adapted to your needs - even outside our website. You can determine at any time - even at a later date - which cookies you allow and which you do not allow (more on this under "Change settings").

The JBL website uses several types of cookies to provide you with full functionality and many services: Technical and functional cookies are absolutely necessary so that everything works when you visit this website. In addition, we use cookies for marketing purposes. You can determine at any time - even at a later date - which cookies you allow and which you do not (more on this under "Change settings").

Our data protection declaration tells you how we process personal data and what purposes we use the data processing for. tells you how we process personal data and what purposes we use the data processing for. Please confirm the use of all cookies by clicking "Accept" - and you're on your way.

Are you over 16 years old? Then confirm the use of all cookies with "Noticed" and you are ready to go.

Choose your cookie settings

Technical and functional cookies, so that everything works when you visit our website.
Marketing cookies, so that we recognize you on our pages and can measure the success of our campaigns.
I accept the YouTube Terms of Service and confirm that I have read and understood the YouTube Terms of Service .

PUSH messages from JBL

What are PUSH messages? As part of the W3C standard, web notifications define an API for end-user notifications that are sent to the user's desktop and/or mobile devices via the browser. Notifications appear on the end devices as they are familiar to the end user from apps installed on the device (e.g. emails). Notifications appear on the end user’s device, just like an app (e.g. for emails) installed on the device.

These notifications enable a website operator to contact its users whenever they have a browser open - it doesn’t matter whether the user is currently visiting the website or not.

To be able to send web push notifications, all you need is a website with a web push code installed. This allows brands without apps to take advantage of many of the benefits of push notifications (personalised real-time communications at just the right moment).

Web notifications are part of the W3C standard and define an API for end user notifications. A notification makes it possible to inform the user about an event, such as a new blog post, outside the context of a website.

JBL GmbH & Co. KG provides this service free of charge, and it is easy to activate or deactivate.