The Importance Of Oxygen In Your Koi Pond, Part 2!

If you want to add plants to your waterfall, use plants like Baby Tears and different kinds of Moss. Place them where the water will splash on them.You can also try Isotoma fluviatilis. There are other water plants that don`t require a specific root base and can be put anywhere in the waterfall, like Parrot Feather, Water Pea and Watercress.

One great thing about Moss and Baby Tears is it doesn`t take much of either of them to look great, so long as it gets the right amount of moisture, it will grow rapidly and spread, climbing up rocks and other places around/in the pond.

There are plants that need to be contained to prevent overcrowding, for example, Papyrus and Horse Tail ( Equisetum fluviatale) will need to be put in a planter pot or a separate pocket built into the Koi pond or waterfall. It would be a superb idea to build a bog pond or bog planter on the perimeter of your Koi pond.

This is a raised, shallow ( 6 to 8 inches deep) pond full of bog plants, for bog plant info, check out: www.plantideas.com/bog/index.html You will need to flood this area with a part of the unfiltered waterfall return water and allow it to trail back into the Koi pond. You have now made an extremely effective natural biological filter.

What happens is the fish waste, as it is absorbed by the bog soil, is broken down into ammonia by aerobic bacteria, or using oxygen. This bacteria reproduces at higher rates than the beneficial Nitrosomonas bacteria does, which actually breaks the ammonia down, so the aerobic bacteria and the Nitrosomonas compete for oxygen and use so much of it that the area they inhabit becomes anaerobic, or oxygen-deficient. as per http://doughoover.articlealley.com

Then, the ammonia by-product of the fish waste being broken down by aerobic bacteria is attacked by Nitrosomonas, which breaks down into toxic nitrite. This is then broken down by other aerobic bacteria, called Nitrobacters and converts the nitrite into beneficial nitrate, thus becoming food for the plants.

You can have smaller bog planters that work in the same way as the water passes through to be cleaned, it picks up oxygen before returning to the pond. For more info, you can visit: www.aquafill.com or www.watergardenauthority.com