• Change 10% to 20% of the water per 4 weeks using a gravel cleaner if you have gravel or stir it
• Net out leaves as often as possible
• Never change more than 1/3 of the water at a time
• At no time do the fish come out of the pond
• Feed a maximum of what they can eat in 30 sec ensuring that you can`t see one spec after 30sec - once or twice a week, in the morning, max 2 times per week
• New Life Spectrum is the best pond fish food - it produces very little organic waste and is the healthiest and best colour enhancer on the market.
• Increase feed if they look skinny and decrease if they look fat
• If water is not clean don’t feed and check that you have adequate water flow in the pond.
• Only one person is allowed to feed
• Add 1 teaspoon salt per 5lt of the pond water
• Test pH weekly, keep it 7.4
• Carbonate Hardness must be present between 80 – 150ppm. This must be tested using a KH test kit
• Add double dose of Easy-life water ager to any tap water that you add to the pond
• Never clean gravel in tap water unless it is has never been in the pond
• Never use tap water to clean your filter media because tap water contains chlorine, which kills bacteria and the filter must grow bacteria to break down fish waste. If there is No bacteria in the system there will be no fish. Use pond water to clean filter media then discard the dirty water.
• Clean any filter sponges weekly.
• Lack of bacteria will create cloudy water
• To acclimatise new fish, float them in their bag in the pond for 30mins before releasing into pond

Place a bit of polyfilter in the filter or in the water of the pond and replace it when it turns black. The polyfilter will remove all the bad stuff from the water including phosphate which is what creates algae!

By Paul Talbot