Pond Building 101 - Construction

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Construction - Testing

Early December. It's time to begin lowering the ph in the pond. Water has been in the pond for about 3 weeks now and Doug says we can start the 3-month process of acidifying the water using muratic acid. There are, of course, no fish in the pond yet! We started by adding one gallon of acid.

Yellow is good--means acid is high--a ph of below 7. The alkaline in the gunnite and plaster doesn't take long to raise the ph up. The goal is to get the ph rise to slow down and finally stabilize. As of this writing (12/17), it takes 2 days for the ph to rise back to a measurable amount after adding 1/2 gallon of acid. Blue is bad! Blue on this ph measuring kit means the ph has risen above 9. We have a ways to go!

When the ph remains stable, we can drain the water scrub the walls down, refill and test the water with some feeder goldfish.

Koi can tolerate ph as high as 8.5, but will be stressed and more subject to ailments. Ideal is about 7.6, but new concrete ponds remain above 8 for quite a while. Doug said our fish would adapt to a high ph, but it will have to be stable at 8.5 or lower first.

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