What Is New Pond Syndrome?

Setting up a new pond from scratch can often lead to a moment of disappointment as your freshly built garden pond turns to a nasty pea green sludge during the first few weeks and months. This is known as ‘New Pond Syndrome’ and happens due to a chemical imbalance with in your pond water this is because your filter isn’t mature enough yet to deal with everything that is happening in your pond. These things do settle down and will take some time to establish but there are a few things you can do to help sort it out.

The Pond Nitrogen Cycle

Nitrogen is essential for all living cells. The nitrogen cycle is a process which decaying organic nitrogen compounds, and specifically toxic ammonia waste are oxidized. This establishes the nitrogen cycle and is the key to maturing a new pond. At any time, ammonia and further oxidized nitrogen compounds can be consumed by algae and plants.

Ammonia, Nitrite, and Nitrate are the basic fertilizer nutrients for photosynthetic organisms.

Your plants and your fish will thrive with low levels of nitrogenous waste. However algae increases greatly from excesses of nutrients. Therefore to reduce algae and mature a new pond, you must give your pond a way to establish the nitrogen cycle. helping it along its way.

Decaying plant and fish waste create ammonia

The nitrogen cycle begins with ammonia. It is produced from eaten fish food, excreted as ammonia in the urine from your Koi, Respired ammonia, Ammonia from oxidized amino acids, unprocessed amino chains and cellular material in faeces or shredded mucus (The koi’s slime coat). The remainder of the faeces, along with uneaten fish food and dead plant matter are most dangerous for your pond dead organisms are further decomposed into ammonia by fungi and detritivores (i.e. larvae, scuds, planaria) and microscopic bacteria.

Ammonia is converted into nitrite

Ammonia is highly toxic in alkaline water (alkaline water is water with pH greater than 7, which is neutral.) Your pond should have a pH greater than 7, but less than 8. Your plants cannot consume enough ammonia to keep it from reaching lethal levels to your fish, but the wet surfaces of your pond are covered by an invisible blanket of Nitrosomonas bacteria. This “good bacteria”  witch converts ammonia into nitrite.

In order to turn the ammonia into nitrite these bacteria must also consume oxygen and carbonate. If your carbonate hardness drops below 50 ppm (3dKH), Nitrosomonas may enter dormancy, resulting in a “pond crash”. or new pond syndrome

Nitrite is converted into nitrate

The resulting nitrite is a toxic waste by product but not as lethal as ammonia. Nitrite is able to be consumed by your plants. Unfortunately plants alone cannot consume enough nitrite to detoxify your pond water. And once again another protective blanket of aerobic bacteria work steadily to oxidize toxic nitrite. Bacterium of the Nitrobacter genus live on well-oxygenated surface areas in the pond like the bottom of your pond or the pond walls. They can quickly metabolize nitrite into nitrate when they are exposed to the right amount of oxygen. These bacteria thrive on surfaces where oxygen rich water flows.

Nitrobacter work really slowly when they are in a low to moderate oxygen environments, so if your pond is heavily stocked koi or other fish a waterfall or air pump with a  may not help you enough. If you have more than a few koi, your pond design needs a submerged under gravel filter or an external bead filter.

Low levels of nitrates are the end result of a mature pond

Finally the resulting nitrate is only toxic in high levels. It must be removed from the pond in one of 4 ways: through plants as fertilizer, thru algae as fertilizer, through pond water changes (10% changes) or through de-nitrifying bacteria. The slow  process of de-nitrification means these bacteria must work in an environment absent of oxygen, such as the deepest nooks of your pond.  it is worth noting that rainwater from thunderstorms will increase your nitrate, because lightning fixes atmospheric nitrogen. This can sometimes cause pea-soup syndrome. In such cases, we recommend you add PURE+ Filter Start Gel

What causes New Pond Syndrome?

Ponds take time to mature. Although you may have gone through the essentials of treating your water for chlorine before adding it to your pond and buying an adequate pond filtration system for your setup there are many factors that take time to balance out your water chemistry.

Perhaps most importantly is the nitrogen cycle in your pond. You water will likely look fine until you add fish and that’s where problems begin. Fish  like every other natural creature produce waste which has a high quantity of ammonia. Ammonia is like poison to fish  Potentially stopping them from breathing properly and burning their scales and gills if the concentration gets too high.

In a mature well established pond the biological component of your filter will feature a huge colony of beneficial nitrifying bacteria This breaks down ammonia into less harmful nitrites, and then into nitrates which become food for your aquatic pond plants  which then go on to  create oxygen for your fish to breathe.

This completes the cycle but in a new pond  your colony of bacteria and your plants are not yet well established meaning that ammonia and nitrites build up without turning into nitrates quick enough this can then protentional end up poisoning your fish potentially leading to death. This broken cycle can also effect your water’s pH level to.

Stopping and preventing/ curing New Pond Syndrome

There are a number of things you can do to help your pond reach maturity quicker and the first thing is to establish what is going on in your pond water using a pond water test kit This can check for ammonia, nitrates and nitrites as well as pH levels quickly and easily well before any symptoms in your pond develop.

Once you know what is going on you will be able to takes steps to resolve the situation and that usually starts with your filter and keeping on top of water changes

You can give your filter a big kick start by ensuring that you have the best biological media installed as well as helping it along with filter starting treatments which can be bought as one offs to get things rolling.

Ensuring you have plenty of nitrate feeding plants is a can  help too completing the cycle and oxygenising your water but one of the biggest things you can do is to not over stock your pond with Koi

You might well be able to fit 10 or so fish in your pond but to avoid overloading your filter with more ammonia than it can handle all at once it might be an idea to  add them gradually or maybe two or three at a time over a period of months to allow your filter to compensate for the extra workload.

Finally, you need to clear up the mess that New Pond Syndrome has caused This usually comes in the form of a big algae bloom. There are a range of great algae treatments available on the market that can handle anything from small ponds to lakes and you can always add a UV Clarifier to your filtration system This helps to fuse together free floating algae particles to remove that nasty green tinge from your water at Cotswold Koi we stock a wide variety of treatments for blanket weed and filter start gels and uv,s

Summing up

• Be patient when adding fish to your pond  don’t add more than your filter can handle
• Use filter start supplements to develop good colonies of nitrifying bacteria to your pond.
• Ensure you have great filter media with a large surface area
• Test your pond regularly for ammonia, nitrites and your pH level with a water test kit
• Use algae cures and consider a UV clarifier.
• Don’t over feed your fish ( if the fish haven’t eaten all you feed in 5 minutes remove the left over)
• Keep on top of your pond maintenance and water changes (Filter cleans)