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Fish Keeping Water Features with Inhabitants. If you're looking for nature and beauty, water features with live fish and plants is the only way to go. There are many different designs we can create. We can include; The only recommended species stocking are Goldfish, Koi or any native cold water species. Water Feature depths we recommend are 3-6 ft deep for keeping live inhabitants in all year round. Koi requires a large pond for swimming. 3' minimum depth and about 10-15' in diameter. When keeping inhabitants, its best to use a net over your pond to keep out animals that may want to have some lunch while your at work. Who wants to come home and see that a $100 Koi has been snatched up? You also want to keep an eye on the water parameters such as PH, Hardness, Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate and Phosphates. As well as heavy metals and other toxins such as copper, iron, zinc and chloramines'. Test kits are sold for these.
Ammonia and Nitrite are produced from fish waste, food and plants that are
decaying. Aerobic Bacteria within the substrate
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and filtration will convert the
ammonia to nitrite then into nitrate which is much less toxic. You still want to
keep nitrate as low as you can. Usually, the only way of doing this is with
water changes, but who wants to change thousands of gallons of water every week
or every other week or even every month? The correct way is to create a
"balanced" eco system. Where you have enough plants, light and waste being
produced to keep everything in a balance. Anaerobic bacteria will turn nitrate
into nitrogen gas through a process called denitrification. Anaerobic bacteria
requires an environment with little to no oxygen present.