| KFG: You are getting into subjects about which I know something, but perhaps just enough to be dangerous?The posters with real breeding experience may have more useful advice.
Soils go through many changes when they become submerged. A brand new mud pond may need "conditioning" by just filling with water and allowing it to lay fallow for a while. The more humic material in the soil, the more the chance of "rotting", with hydrogen sulfide and the like forming in the substrate. Over time, natural processes take hold and a sort of equilibrium occurs. Different bacteria etc will take up residence than is true in non-submerged soils.
If you were using the pond for fry, then you would want to fertilize (chicken guano?) to encourage an algae bloom and production of living foods. Fry are fragile in some respects, but the huge volume of a mud pond provides a huge cushion. For adult fish, I'd want the pond to age for some time. The presence of dragonfly nymphs and the like is not the concern it is with a fry pond, so letting time pass is not a concern. If your soils have a moderately high iron content, as I suspect they may, you will have some protection against hydrogen sulfide forming in the substrate. But, other substances may go into solution and take some time to become bound up in organic molecules. So, subject to different advice from one having hands-on experience with koi mud ponds, I'd suggest you fill your pond and just let it sit a month or two before introducing adult fish. That will give you an opportunity to test water parameters after it stabilizes and decide if the parameters are what you want. Make sense? |