I know I have mentioned this before, but I don't think I got alot of info. I have never tested the water in my pond and I have had my pond for 3 years. What are the benefits of testing the water? What do you do when something is high or something is low? Does the saying, "if it's not broke don't fix it", apply here? My fish aren't dying. I lost quite a few when I had my frogs, but the frogs ran away. Thanks guys, for your info!!
Ellen

There are many benefits to testing your water. First, you learn what is normal for your tap water. Sometimes, something in your water may not be ideal such as pH or hardness, and those can be adjusted. Your fish may seem healthy but they can sometimes be made even more so if the water is properly adjusted. By knowing your normal water parameters, if something does go wrong, you can check them and tell if that's the problem. For example, let's say someone's fish all start dying today so they run out and buy test kits and find the pH is 8.5. They freak out thinking the pH is too high and killed all their fish so they add pH down and so on. The problem doesn't get better. Why? Well, they didn't know that their pH has always been 8.5 for the last say 5 years.

Another benefit of regularly testing the water is that you can catch things before they get out of hand. You can see that say your pH is creeping up, or your hardness is too low before those things affect the fish. I have test kits for my pond for the following: pH, hardness (GH), alkalinity (KH), ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, oxygen, and salt. There are more test kits than that but those are the basics. I think the most important of those are pH and ammonia as they are most often to be problematic. Once a pond is cycled, testing it for the basics every few weeks should be enough. I only test for oxygen when I think it's too hot, or the fish seem stressed from possible low oxygen levels.

There are many things that could be done if a test is off but too much for me to cover right now. Pond stores sell chemicals to adjust pH, increase hardness, deactivate ammonia and nitrite, and increase salt by adding salt. Oxygen is improved with aeration. Reducing hardness is the most difficult as it requires adding water with lower hardness.

Thanks, Robyn!! I appreciate you!!