Ponds fertilised. 5 weeks until spawnings

I do most of the work myself on the breeding project, but an extra pair of hands is always helpful :-). Fertilising the ponds has become and annual event and I'm making good progress in depleting the pallet load of dry chicken manure pellets I bought a couple of years ago.

The ponds are about half full, and as as well as fertilising them, I also added aeration. A little more than last year.

Other news. I'm holding the females tank at 19C, and they are in good health. We're slowly increasing the feeding, not wanting to over stretch the filtration.

Unfortunately, we did just that on the males tank. It's unheated and sitting at 14C. And they received a little too much food this week and the fish were looking a unhappy on Friday night. A good water change has dealt with the immediate problem, and we will be a little more gentle building up the feeding on that tank to give the filter a chance to keep up.

The females tank is starting to go green, and I'll need to step in. A few weeks ago, I came back from a business trip to find the polytunnel power had cut. After an hour's testing of all the appliances at quite a late hour in the evening - I spotted the UV non the females tank was the culprit and have since left it turned off. It's quite an old unit, and might need replacing. With the water starting to turn green, this will need my attention soon.

Spawning is a little closer, and I'm aiming to run the first effort in 5 weeks time.