HH Aquatics

17/06/2024

We got our “selling animals as pets” aquatics license from the council! After rigorous audits of our premises and procedures, we got a 4 star license (the highest a new startup can get)!

25/03/2024

Parasites! It’s that time of year where the little critters come visit us (and sometimes hit quite hard!). We are keen to make an impact and to help koi hobbyists get through this period and ready for the prime season!
What we are offering is 10x onsite appointments (first come first serve) for people within 5 miles of BS10 in Bristol. We may travel further if the customer will cover mileage costs. We will spend approximately 1 hr with you at your pond and provide:

1. Show you how to safely take a koi scrape
2. How to use the microscope
3. What to look for in terms of parasites
4. Offer recommendations on how to treat parasites found
5. Provide general advice on water quality and other koi illness signs
6. Review filtration setup and offer ideas to either improve or reduce costs

All of this for £50. Obviously this isn’t profitable so the benefits to us are to build relationships with a customer base as we look to grow the business.

The team member visiting you will have medicinal/chemical treatments for all parasites, infections and water issues with them so if you don’t have the right medication, they will get you going. Each treatment will be £10 extra.

If your koi requires sedating and any ulcer/sore/infection reatment this will be priced fairly and at the time of visit.

Some parasite research of effective treatments we have completed recently:

Client brought in his Koi who were very poorly. We found the Chilodonella parasite (and others) so we decided to run some tests on the effectiveness of vario...

11/03/2024

New Koi YouTube channel from one of our customers. Been having good conversations about his plans and passion for Koi. If you want real koi experiences and some very useful information, it’s worth subscribing to..

Share your videos with friends, family and the world

20/02/2024

Ingenious idea by one of our customers to layer different grades of of our custom sieve inserts for our showers. Particularly useful after a pond or filter clean to really catch fine particles. Sieves are different grades (microns).

19/02/2024

New filter release! Moving bed K1 system. 40mm inlet and outlets. Brilliant for additional filtration and bio support. First 2 orders will be early adopters and will have 20% discount in return for constructive feedback. Visit here to order https://hh-aquatics.com/products/moving-k1-bed-small

04/02/2024

We have exciting news to share. Following the success of our trickle/bio showers and sieve concept filters which are sold without “koi tax”, we are bringing to market a semi-customisable moving bed filter. Inlet and outlet locations can be customised. The large footprint model will come with 25-30l of K1 (refurbished and cleaned with PP). The smaller footprint will come with 15-18l of K1. You will also be able to customise the inlet locations for the air hose(s). We predict the shipped costs for these will be in the region of:
£99 for the large model
£76 for the smaller model

04/02/2024

Our newly introduced Sterlet to the “specimen” pond! Been in quarantine (as it was new to the family) for a while and now is happy with friends. Feeding from hand and growing!

02/01/2024

Excited to share this as we test the effectiveness of treatments on the Chilodonella parasite! Good fun doing the experiment and we also healed some poorly koi too! Very interesting to watch the parasites as various treatments were introduced to the slide.

Client brought in his Koi who were very poorly. We found the Chilodonella parasite (and others) so we decided to run some tests on the effectiveness of vario...

19/12/2023

Daily Koi Tip #11: Koi Medication
There is a tendency for koi keepers to treat the pond with chemicals when signs of illness show up without understanding the root cause. For example if the illness is due to parasites, it is imperative to find out exactly what parasite is present. Once you know exactly what you are trying to treat, you can choose the best and very specific treatment for the parasite. For example flukes require different medication from costia etc. I will share exactly how to identify which parasite you have in a later update (you will need a microscope).

The first step when signs of illness show up should be to check the water parameters and any other stressors. At a minimum, you should be checking ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, PH and KH using dropper tests (not rubbish test strips).

17/11/2023

Daily Koi Tip #10 Pond Filtration

If you are considering Koi (not goldfish) then please trust us and go for a bottom drain. It doesn’t have to be one of the fancy £300+ ones. I would rather go for a low cost 4” bottom drain than an expensive 2” one. A decent 4” drain from Kockney Koi is less than £40.
Koi p**p ALOT and if this doesn’t get exited from the pond efficiently and quickly, it will start to break down and encourage nitrite into the water and be a breeding ground for unwanted bacteria on the pond floor. A bottom drain is effectively a koi toilet! There are many many reasons why it is better than putting a pump into the pond:
1:) Pumps have impellers and chop up the p**p and make “p**p soup” - this is harder for your filters to filter it out!
2.) With pumps in the pond, heavier solids sometimes sit on the bottom longer
3.) Pumps aren’t good at dealing with leaves and small twigs whereas a bottom drain eats it!
4.) Bottom drains use gravity to pull the water through the filter - it’s a constant flow which allows good dwell time of water in the media.
5.) Pumps have moving parts and rubber connectors which can perish
6.) I don’t like having electric wires in my own ponds - water conducts electricity!
7.) Bottom drains just need a weekly purge - you do this without getting wet or manual cleaning- to clean a pump, you have to get it out, wipe it down and clean.
8.) 7/10 ponds I visit for health issues have pump fed filters without a bottom drain. I record the details of every customer visit so have the evidence.

16/11/2023

Daily Koi Tip #9 Water Changes

You see it on the forums - “you must change 10% of your water every week”. But this doesn’t take into account people’s individual scenarios…

At HH - we don’t agree (and nor do many experienced Koi owners).

If your water parameters are perfect, why swap out perfect water with tap water that has traces of all sorts of nasties in it? Especially if your source water has adverse PH or very high chlorine, lead, drugs etc!!

Now, if you have ammonia and nitrite issues that you are trying to get on top of, then water changes are important.

Topping up from evaporation losses is as much as you need if your ponds parameters are excellent.