Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Water chemistry Testing Pond Water

What is a good but cheap way to test pond water? My pond is in a string of ponds. The pond upstream flows into my pond via a weir and my pond flows into the next pond via a weir. I would like to test the water in my pond even though it just flows into the next pond eventually.

Any recommendations? Thanks!

jmed, what are you planning to test it for? Normally, a package deal testing for various parameters are cheaper than testing individual..of course, each lab is different.

Suggestion: when testing in a string of ponds, say, you have 6 ponds, test the upper most, then middle, and the end. This way, you can see the differential issues between the upper and lower body of water. The center dictates what is going on in the interim. Once again, we need to know what you're planning to test the pond water for?

I'm not sure what I would test for besides PH, alkaline, mercury and anything else that is typically tested. Thanks!

If the lab near you already have the specifics on testing pond water, you hit a few parameters on the head, but also compare to this list to monitor the basic parameters for your ponds:

1. pH
2. Turbidity
3. Dissolved Oxygen (if you have your own, it will be proven to be much far less expensive in the long run). This also include a good water thermometer to log your pond's conditions of dissolved oxygen at different temperature, and fish population vs natural background bio-diversity that take up oxygen.
4. Nitrate, Nitrite, Ammonia.
5. Salinity

If you're testing for heavy metals, such as mercury, it's great as an insurance for health monitoring reasons.

Leo, curious...when testing for metals, do you sample water,sediment, or flesh?

James, you can test both ways to find specifics of bio-accumulation of heavy metals both in flesh and in sedimentary settlement.

When sampling for the heavy metals in soil, you're looking for total heavy metal deposit from the ambient levels. This means the heavy metal accumulate in the soil by means of atmospheric deposition (settling from the atmosphere), and delivery by means of the water transport. Unfortunately, there is no way to find the ambiance level of heavy metals unless you have the current sample result, as well as the historical records on the heavy metals.

When you do a tissue sample, you're calculating for the possible bio-accumulation by the fish in an incremental process. You can tell whether the fish exposed in the pond have accumulated certain level of heavy metals that can be a threat to themselves and human. Normally,it's a yearly basis.

When you test for heavy metals, you always go for the soil first. When the soil results yield an alarm, test the live tissue, especially the livers of the fish. Hope that shed a bit of light somewhat.

Yes it did. Very informational. I did'nt realize it was the liver that was tested, but makes absolute sense.

Wow! Thanks for all the great info!