Answers to Water Gardening & Pond Care Questions (FAQs).

My name is Harold Horn, Im writing you from Saudi Arabia but I live in the Philippines, Ive started construction on a fish pond in the Philippines and would like your suggestions on what types of water plants I can have in my pool there and would be good to help with oxygen rejuvenation? Also, can you show me how to build a sufficient biological filtration system? Last Question: I need to find out how many fish can I stock in my pool so, what does it mean when people speak about more or less 2 ins of fish per square foot of surface area how many fish does 2 ins represent?

Thank you Harold

Hi Harold,
Any type of plant that survives with its leaves under water will oxygenate the water to some extent. To what extent varies a great deal and there is a concern in a warm climate that some plants may become pernicious. In South Africa I know different form of the Egeria are popular where they are known as Elodea, like Elodea densa. If there are any retailers of plants for aquaria and aquarium fish, there should be something suitable in their selection. Cabomba caroliniana is another efficient one.
Biological filtration can be achieved by passing the water from the pool through any sort of open medium. Even an inert gravel, cut up pieces of plastic tubing, expanded clay pellets (leica), anything. If you have several mediums in series they can be finer the more filtered the water becomes toward the end of its journey through the filter system, finishing off with open foam material. This will take a month to mature, for bacteria to build up, before any biological digestion of the muck takes place. In the meantime it needs to run 24 hours a day Simply, the water can be pumped into a box with two chambers. Falling through a settlement chamber with brushes at first and then rising up through a medium, up through a sponge and falling back through an outlet at the top back into the pool.
'2 inches of fish' refers to the length of the fish, in plural or singly, all of them added together, measured from the nose to the tip of the tail i.e. 5cm, for every square foot of surface area of pool water. This translates as just about half a metre of fish per square metre.
There is a see-through-view of a filter box attached. This can be made from the 'header tank' for a normal domestic dwelling with sheet of plastic siliconed into place.This drawing is feature in one of my "Perfect Pond Detective Books" :- 10GBP plus postage.
Yours
Peter May

Hello Peter,

I have sense calculated the square surface measurement of my new pond which is 1,890 sq. ft., My Question is: I would like to raise Milk Fish and Tilapia these two breads are compatible and can live under the same conditions, the Milk Fish normally grow to about 12 to 18 inches and the Tilapia somewhere around 10 inches, with this in mind how many do you recommend I put of each bread in my pond?

Thanks for you good help,
Harold

Hello Harold,
You are really stretching me here. milk fish and Tilpia are new too me although I can appreciate they are not for millions of people who eat them and farm them. Is the Milk Fish the Chanos Chanos farmed in Indonesia as bait for Tuna? And are they not saline fish or can they cope with both?And is the Tilapia the Florida fish farmed for food? In which case, if you type in the names into the Google search engine it comes up with loads of addresses that advise you how to farm both of them.
I understand the Tilapia is pretty good at consuming algae, which is good news. The bad news seems to be that they are pretty voracious plant eaters all round and that oxygenation can be bit of a problem. In Florida they use wind and sun driven turbines to oxygenate the holding tanks.
Either way, I would start off with just half a dozen fry of each and see how they get on. A month or two later add some more. In terms of gold fish, I think you are talk of a max of 200 fish altogether, but if you want them to bread etc....
It wouldn't surprise me if in the farming of the Tilapia in particular they were not kept in quite crowded conditions because they seem to be particularly disease resistant. Oxygen is the key thing though.
Yours
Pete May

Further to my email re your fish, a colleague of mine that is an editor of a fish keeping magazine who has experience in fishkeeping all over the world expressed a word of warning in regards to some breeds of Tilapia because they can be such a pest in some environments. For detailed information on every fishspecies known check out the website: www.fishbase.org.

fishspecies known check out the website: www.fishbase.org.