 Water quality is a very important part of pond management. Two important parameters to measure is the hardness and alkalinity. If these two are good, the rest of your water quality parameters will typically be good too. Alkalinity is the pH buffer in your pond. Typically you want it between 50 and 150 parts per million, but 20 is adequate. To measure alkalinity, you will need to fill up your test tube for 10 milliliters of water. And then you need to put two indicator tablets of PCGMR. Then you need to do a simple titration to figure out your alkalinity. You should fill up with alkalinity titration B. And what you need to do is start adding this solution to your water until the color turns purple. Start slowly and be mixing it while you're doing it. As you can see, it's almost there, you just need to add a little bit more until you see the purple color change. Then you just read off your parts per million on here. See, this was at 40. And since we doubled the solution, you need to divide by two. And so that would mean 20 parts per million, which is adequate for your pond. Next we'll go to hardness. Now alkalinity and hardness are typically linked. If one is low, then the other one would probably be low also. But you still need to double check. So for hardness you need to fill your tube to 12.9 milliliters. You need to add five drops of each solution into your water. Then mix it together. Then you need to do your titration. Just fill up the syringe with hardness number seven. Then slowly add it to your water solution. And this one you're just looking for any color change. You can see it's starting to turn blue. And you just read your parts per million. And again, it's 20 parts per million, just like it was for your alkalinity. So you know it's correct. If your pond has low alkalinity, it will affect your fish growth. And it'll also affect your algae blooms, your phytoplankton blooms. And it just lowers the productivity of your pond. To increase your alkalinity and hardness, you can add agricultural lime and get the exact recommendation for agricultural lime to add in your pond. You can send soil samples to your local university and they will give you the recommendations.