I'm looking for some serious help with what to do with my pond.?

Question

((I'm copying this from my post on another website to try to get faster advice! Please do not spam or harass me :3))

My parents had a cement pond(w/waterfall) built into the backyard landscaping maybe 13 years ago. The waterfall is broken and has been for as long as I can remember. We've had one batch of fish that look like koi (not sure if they are or not) in there for I'd say 8 years until my grandpa killed them all with all-day hose water change.

Last summer he came back to the deserted pond to tadpoles and thought that the pond could still sustain life so he bought a batch of four new fish (similar to the ones we had before) and dumped them into this green colored pond.

It has been a year and the fish are bigger and fatter and still hide in their little caves when I sneak over. I feel bad for them having to live in this green pea soup and keep complaining to my mother, but she seems hesitant to do anything about it.

She wants me to stop worrying about the pond and concentrate on the coming school year, but I really want to do something!

I'm guessing the pond is 3 x 4 sq ft and 3 ft deep maybe bigger. It does not seem to have filtration or aeration so the water is pretty still.

My goal is to start with getting the water clearer without alot of work, so maybe some plants? I'm thinking of getting some floating plants to create shade and hopefully an underwater plant to get the fish more air.

I was thinking of cultivating some of these plants in a separate container of the same pond water in case the fish eat the plants.

I will go test the PH of the water soon, this tester is the only piece of real equipment I have.

I'll update you guys if I get more specs!

I'd appreciate any advise. I've been reading the articles on the site all day long and I'm feeling more confident that I might be able to help these fish.

FTW, I live in Northern California so it's pretty sunny and warm :3

~Mellie

Answer 1

first thing you can do is buy a filter that's the best tool UV light will cost much but it can stop algae though and consume lots of electricity.

Plants can help as long not too much because they consume oxygen during night time.  

enjoy this koi breeder

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArAlwupRy...

kOi keeper & goldfish keeper

http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/world...

http://www.geocities.com/koiphilippines/...

Answer 2

well there is this tablet.. umm it's called no algaae tank buddies.. haha. i also have a tank. and i've used it before. umm sometimes if you but the black sucker fishes in them.. cats from the backyard come and eat themm.. (experience) haha. you can put just any regular leaves on top of the water so the fish can huddle over under the leaves for shade and cool water. and rocks and tiny pebbles couldn't hurt. umm let's see the pond probably can carry like 10 fish.. haha i don't know.

Answer 3

I sounds to me like the reason its green is from over growth of algea. My suggestion would be to add a plecostomus they love to eat algea. Also you could introduce snails that would help too. & usually pet store treat snails like pests so they would probally be happy to rid some to you. Im not familliar with pond plants sorry. But you can buy regular bunched aquarium plants & try them they don't cost mutch so would be a good {guinea pig} plant. If you don't want to try any of those then there are treatments you can get to remove algea. Good luck I hope I've somewhat helped you.