The Basics Of Keeping Koi
Are you thinking about putting a koi carp pond in your garden? A koi fish pond is a great improvement to any garden.
A garden pond is totally relaxing: watching the fish going about their daily lives is relaxing and listening to the sound of the water moving is relaxing as well.
Koi carp are a decent selection over some other fish because they grow quite large and breed freely even in captivity.
They are not that problematic to take care of either.
As with all fish ponds, you have to maintain the quality of the water, but that is not so much of a problem when you know what you are doing.
Once you have got the water correct, the rest will follow more or less on its own, although you will have to check it frequently.
Having said that, you ought to not merely hurry out in to the garden, dig a hole and fill it with fish.
You have to buff up on the subject first, but there is so much information on koi on the market, that you will have no problem in that respect.
There is also plenty of information on the Internet.
The first thing to do is dig a hole for your pond, but it better not to have it uniformly deep.
It ought to be three or four feet deep at one end and a foot or so deep at the other.
The koi will lie dormant and sleep in the deeper water, but only the fry will feel comfortable in the shallow end.
They will take sanctuary there to avoid being eaten by the larger fish.
Like most fish, koi are cannibals.
Once your pond has been dug out, fill it with water and leave it for a week.
Use this week to test your water features such as the water pumps, the filter and the fountain.
If you are losing water attempt to plug the leak.
If you have to keep topping up the water level from the hosepipe, you will almost certainly run into difficulties with chlorine.
After a week, the chlorine in the tap water will have dissipated and any surplus oil in your pond equipment will have been flushed out, so you can put aquatic plants in.
Plant them in pots so that you can move them easily if necessary.
You should also build some underwater caves for the fish to hide in.
Once you are satisfied that everything is working well and that the environment is stable (this is easier to do in larger ponds), you can think about purchasing some koi.
You have to make a decision why you would like to have koi.
Do you want to show them and possibly earn some money? In that case you will have to start with expensive fish, but if you merely want to sit and watch them, the cheapest ones are OK.
You can probably get a friend to give you a few anyway.
If you procure your fish in the breeding season, you will almost certainly get a couple of gravid (pregnant) females anyway.
A note of warning: fish normalize their environment better than we do.
A given amount of water will only hold a precise number of inches of fish.
So, as an example, say that each ten gallons of water will be sufficient for ten inches of fish and you have 200 gallons that is 200 inches of fish, which is 20 x 10 inch fish or 40 x 5 inch fish.
As the fish grow, they will die to maintain this ratio, so do not purchase too many until you are familiar with the ratio.
A garden pond is totally relaxing: watching the fish going about their daily lives is relaxing and listening to the sound of the water moving is relaxing as well.
Koi carp are a decent selection over some other fish because they grow quite large and breed freely even in captivity.
They are not that problematic to take care of either.
As with all fish ponds, you have to maintain the quality of the water, but that is not so much of a problem when you know what you are doing.
Once you have got the water correct, the rest will follow more or less on its own, although you will have to check it frequently.
Having said that, you ought to not merely hurry out in to the garden, dig a hole and fill it with fish.
You have to buff up on the subject first, but there is so much information on koi on the market, that you will have no problem in that respect.
There is also plenty of information on the Internet.
The first thing to do is dig a hole for your pond, but it better not to have it uniformly deep.
It ought to be three or four feet deep at one end and a foot or so deep at the other.
The koi will lie dormant and sleep in the deeper water, but only the fry will feel comfortable in the shallow end.
They will take sanctuary there to avoid being eaten by the larger fish.
Like most fish, koi are cannibals.
Once your pond has been dug out, fill it with water and leave it for a week.
Use this week to test your water features such as the water pumps, the filter and the fountain.
If you are losing water attempt to plug the leak.
If you have to keep topping up the water level from the hosepipe, you will almost certainly run into difficulties with chlorine.
After a week, the chlorine in the tap water will have dissipated and any surplus oil in your pond equipment will have been flushed out, so you can put aquatic plants in.
Plant them in pots so that you can move them easily if necessary.
You should also build some underwater caves for the fish to hide in.
Once you are satisfied that everything is working well and that the environment is stable (this is easier to do in larger ponds), you can think about purchasing some koi.
You have to make a decision why you would like to have koi.
Do you want to show them and possibly earn some money? In that case you will have to start with expensive fish, but if you merely want to sit and watch them, the cheapest ones are OK.
You can probably get a friend to give you a few anyway.
If you procure your fish in the breeding season, you will almost certainly get a couple of gravid (pregnant) females anyway.
A note of warning: fish normalize their environment better than we do.
A given amount of water will only hold a precise number of inches of fish.
So, as an example, say that each ten gallons of water will be sufficient for ten inches of fish and you have 200 gallons that is 200 inches of fish, which is 20 x 10 inch fish or 40 x 5 inch fish.
As the fish grow, they will die to maintain this ratio, so do not purchase too many until you are familiar with the ratio.
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