April 2002
20th Anniversary Year
Selected Articles
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April 2002 20th Anniversary Year Selected Articles |
President to the N.F.K.C members; I would like to thank Pat and Joanne Rutherford for hosting our meeting. Thank You! The Rubens tasted great and so did everything else.
I hope everyone enjoyed Jim Roberts discussion and hopefully we all learned something from it. I know I did. Thank You Jim!
I would like to thank Chuck Meuhe and Willie Welch for the use of their public address systems. The club will be using the P/A’s at future events. With the young Koi show being the first. This will save the club much money with the coming events that we will need the systems for. Thank You!
After the meeting I was approached be a few members with future discussion topics. I feel that input is extremely important for our membership to thrive. We the Board will do our best to fit these and any topics brought to our attention in future meetings or in our news letter. Thank You for your input!
Now is the time to get ready for our Young Koi Show. Dan and Barbara Wehby have been very busy getting the show ready. I can’t thank them enough for the work they have put into this. Please, if there is any help that you can give to the Wehby’s, please do. This is our show and we as a club must make it work. Don’t forget that there will be a Koi auction during the Young Koi Show. Just so we don’t get misunderstood, the auctioned Koi Will Not come from the Show Tanks!!! These auctions help our club, so please, anyone looking for good quality Koi, large or small, come to the show. As always this is a free event.
As I write this article I can’t help but reflect on the past weekend. My wife and I attended A.F.K.A.P.S. and we had a great time. The knowledge that I receive from these types of functions has been so important to my hobby of Koi keeping. The way the clubs help and work together is just great. The N.F.K.C. was well represented in the volunteering stage and attendance. Thank you to everyone who went! Till we meet again,
Tim GassonSecretary's Report By Todo
Tim opened the meeting at 2:08 with 37 members and guests in attendance. After introductions he gave JoAnne Rutherford a thank you gift for hosting the meeting. A new member, John Porter was welcomed. JoAnne delivered the treasurers report, it was voted and accepted. The clubs new online web site was announced, www.nfkc.info. “Another service provided by our club,” Tim said.AFKAPS will be on March 22-24. Tim and Rod offered an outline of what would take place and there was another plea for volunteers. Dan Wehby gave a run down on the upcoming Young Fish Show. He said he already had it set up with Reeds & Rocks at the location we had last year, next to the Marine Institute. There will be sign up for tanks at the next meeting.
The club bought 6 Friendship Awards for giving at shows and events where we send representatives. Tim displayed one of the plaques. Dave Brown arranged for the awards.
Jim Roberts lead a discussion on catching, bagging and transporting fish to shows. He also talked about koi etiquette when buying fish at shows like AFKAPS and the pros and cons on floating your fish or just releasing them into your pond without acclimation.
It was requested that information appear in the newsletter on where to get plastic bags to hold fish and where to get oxygen to fill the bags. (See the article on Oxygen and Bags in this issue)
Bags and Gas by Sandee Todorsky
At the March meeting the membership asked for information on where to get bags and oxygen to transport their koi to shows. Sandee went through the entire process of finding bags and gas locally and I asked her to recount her endeavors.
A few years ago after we had our pond for a full year and lost all the feeder fish we started with, we moved on to Koi. They were much more interesting with their colors and patterns and gentle movement through the water. Then suddenly we had babies in the pond. It took awhile to figure out what they were. We thought we had some sort of infestation until we looked very closely and discovered these tiny little things, barely more than a fine hair in the water, were actually fry (baby koi). We had such a good time watching these babies, even though we only had one survive through to the next year, we decided we wanted to breed fish.
We ended up with so many fish that we got a license to sell these babies. But selling fish meant bagging and being able to safely transport them. On a couple of occasions we had such small fish that we used some Zip-Lock bags. But as the fish got bigger we needed bigger bags and ones that were strong enough to travel.
After a few phone calls, I learned that Duval Container (91 South Myrtle Ave, Jax. 904-355-6591) had bags of all sizes and thickness and most importantly, they would sell to the public. They also did not have a minimum number that had to be purchased at one time. Other places would only sell in lots of 100 or whatever was in a box. So I went down and bought two different sizes and two different thicknesses. That would get us started.
Next we needed oxygen to put into these bags to keep the fish healthy and reduce their stress during transport. I figured this would be no problem because I was a nurse and had contacts in the medical supply business. But when I contacted a friend who worked in the business, she asked which doctor they should call for the prescription! Suddenly this was a problem. I knew that other people had oxygen for their fish. So I sat down with the yellow pages and called different places until I found that welding supply companies carried oxygen that was not considered medical quality but was safe for fish.
I called 3 or 4 places and found that the prices were about the same. But the man I spoke to at Action Welding Supply (6633 Stuart Ave. Jax. 693-4532, off Lane Ave.) was more helpful than others I spoken to. I was concerned about the quality of the oxygen since it was not medical grade and the lives of these fish may depend on it.
The man at Action told me that there is very little difference in the oxygen that medical companies supply and what welders use. Oxygen is flammable and any contaminant could cause a spark. So all the guidelines that are used in checking out the oxygen cylinders and filling the bottles for medical use are also followed in the filling and handling of the oxygen tanks for the welders.
I also described how this oxygen would be used and how I would need a tube that would go from the top of the tank into the bag. This meant handling the control of oxygen had to be a one hand operation. I got the man’s name and made the trip a few days later to Action Welding Supply. After spending a couple hours there, I had everything I needed to supply my babies with oxygen as they left for new homes.
Had I known exactly what I needed, it would not have taken as long nor cost me as much. First off you cannot just put a hose on the tank and turn it on. The oxygen is under high pressure and needs a regulator to decrease the pressure at the nozzle. In addition to the regulator a gauge is attached so you can see how much pressure is left in the tank. We started out with a small bottle, about 18 inches long. Later we decided a bigger bottle was in order so we traded in the small tank and paid the difference to upgrade. Finally we had a one-of-a-kind system that was made just for us. The original rig with single hand control cost us about $130. Now when I go in to get a refill, they simply remove the gauge set-up and place it on a full tank.
Since oxygen tanks need to be transported in an upright position, Todo built a stand that holds the bottle. He can lift it into the back of his truck to transport it safely. And though we are no longer in the fish business, we will keep the oxygen tank as long as we have fish because we take them to shows and gas them before we leave - even for a short trip. It just reduces the stress of the transport and makes the trip more pleasant for everyone involved.
Pond pumps have a very tough job to do; they have to run continuously, 24 hours a day, everyday for months at a time in a challenging environment. The pond water is often laden with small debris and “sludge”.
For this reason, it is important to choose the right pump. Here are some pointers:
* Magnetic Drive pumps are more expensive initially, but they use far less energy than conventional pumps and often pay for themselves in a season or less.
* Sump pumps are often not rated for “continuous” duty and become very hot when running for long periods of time. In small ponds, this can even heat the water.
* Magnetic Drive pumps have only one moving part (the impeller), which makes them fairly easy to repair in most cases.
* For large waterfalls (those that need pumps that move more than 2500 gallons per hour), conventional pumps are often the only choice, although availability of larger magnetic drive pumps increases every year.
* All pumps must be cleaned regularly, how often depends on the debris load of the pond.
* Dirty pumps use more electricity.
* It is important to use pumps marked “oil free” in a pond! If the seals fail in a conventional oil filled pump the mess can be awful and the harm to the critters in the pond irreparable.
* ALWAYS make sure the pump is plugged into a G.F.I. (Ground Fault Interrupter) outlet.
ED: At the AFKAPS show this year, whenever filters were mentioned at the seminars the hot item was trickle down filters. If I find more articles about them I’ll include them here. They seem to be quite effective for nutrilizing ammonia during our hot summers.
The dread of every pond keeper is biofiltration failure. The symptoms often go unnoticed until it is too late. At first, all is well-the pond is clear, the plants are in flower, the water fall sounds soft and soothing.. Before long, the pond keeper adds a few fish. Soon it is great fun to feed them everyday. The fish even become part of the family, complete with names and individual personalities. They grow, breed and multiply. Then suddenly, one day they start gasping at the surface and a few die. Someone suggests testing the water. The test show measurable levels of ammonia or nitrite, both highly toxic to fish. Further investigation reveals that the biofilter is not functioning properly-it is not converting the toxic ammonia and nitrite to nitrates, and as a result the fishes health is compromised. The conclusion is obvious; the pond needs either fewer fish or a better filter. A trickle tower filter will often solve bio-filtration failure and keep it from reoccurring.
Any pond filter where the filtration media is in the air rather than submerged under water is a trickle tower filter. By design, the trickle tower must be above the surface of the pond with water flowing slowly over the media and returning to the pond by gravity.
The bacteria in the filter which convert ammonia and nitrite are aerobic, meaning that they require oxygen. Air contains 23% oxygen by weight, while summer temperature water contains only 8% to 10% concentration at the maximum oxygen solubility in water. So the bacteria in a properly constructed trickle tower are in contact with 230,000 ppm oxygen compared to 80,000 to 100,000 ppm concentration in submerged media filters. It is no wonder that the aerobic bacteria work so much better in a trickle tower filter. From Water Gardening, by Dr. Roddy Conrad