Water Additives: Clays, Filter Start, Bombs & Additives

Water Additives

Koi Keeping has and will always been a challenging hobby. While there are zero shortcuts, in 2020 and beyond technology does offer us some welcome assistance, and one of the aspects of our hobby where this is most prevalent, is water additives. The problem of course is identifying the additives that actually do what they say on the tin, and that actually deliver a benefit!

To assist you we have tried and tested them all! To avoid litigation we don’t comment on those we don’t believe are worth a candle, but we do sell those that are! So of course in the final analysis it’s up to you to make your own minds up! To help, we’ve come up with four broad additive categories:

Please do remember one of the most, if not the most important additive, certainly in the Northwest of England is kH buffer, we cannot stress enough the importance of this product, to protect our beloved Koi from a pH crash, see previous articles on the importance of kH.

Water Additives: Clays, Filter Start, Bombs & Additives

Source Water

Debatably the biggest threat to Koi from tap water is chlorine. Having dechlorinator to hand is never a bad idea although we’d also urge you to fit and maintain a dechlorinator to your system, along with the best purifier your budget allows. This is important to deal with the random chemicals used occasionally for specific purposes by utility companies, these include: aluminium sulphate, pesticides and bactericides.
It’s important to be aware that water suppliers are increasing using ammonia to regulate pH, which is an obvious challenge for us!

Filtration Enhancement

Perhaps the most numerous available, these include filter starts, boosters and bombs. These are designed to stimulate/supplement the population of nitrifiers in our filters. These are useful for boosting filters early in the season, or after treatments. Some are excellent some are less so, we only recommend, and sell the former!

Skin Quality

The rough and tumble of every day pond life is an aggressive and dynamic environment, that also consumes large quantities of salts and minerals, many of which are important to the well being and development of our Koi. It’s important to replace these and that’s what these additives are designed to do. Montmorillonite clays are well proven to help improve skin condition and quality, and these too are included in the products we offer in this category.

Health Care

Keeping our Koi healthy is of course one of our very core objectives, and there are some products designed to help us in this regard. They include for example products to specifically remove pathogenic bacteria, that can be especially problematic for us, especially in spring