Garden Balance

 Koi Fish, Ponds and Filtering

Do You want a Koi pond or Koi fish?

Please answer yourself first and it has to be because you love them and are passionate about them. Your decision shouldn’t be based on impressing your friends.

We build Koi Ponds and sell you top quality Koi because we love them. Our believe is that these are Pets and should be cared for that is why I will explain what they need and how they are kept.

Habitat

Ideally, Koi require a minimum pond depth of 750cm -1 metre and about 500 -1000 litres of water per fish. (Obviously you want them to grow Healthy). We don’t want to cluster them as the fish will be unhappy and Unhealthy and it will not be fun to have them. All the DIY specialities that believe they can build a pond with plastic and fill it with water, plants and Koi, Guess again. This is not suitable as Fish condemn to these kinds of ponds and suffocate and starve themselves to death. They also struggle to grow. I will explain on how to build a proper environment for Koi during this Section.

Ensure that you always have a pump and some kind of Filtration system available with adequate food. They need to eat. Surely you can find some kind cheaper equipment around to have the Koi habitable, although they are not ideal.

You could find pages and pages of information on Koi and this is just an overview and good design on how to go about building a pond and caring for the Koi. Serious hobbyists could find plenty of information and different types of filtration on the internet and local book store which is always handy.

A correctly designed and built Koi pond will provide an excellent environment for its fish population and give you many hours of pleasure. Given sufficient space and depth, Koi will gently swim around their pond creating an air of peace and tranquillity. Large Koi in particular have no predators and will gather at the edge of the pond whenever anyone approaches hoping for something to eat. With a little patience, they’ll soon learn to take food from their keeper's hand.

Correctly designed

There are several essential requirements for your Koi pond to work effectively and efficiently. Always bear in mind that fish eat and live completely in the water and do not have different rooms to use eg. a Toilet, so they live  and eat in their toilet and that needs to be flushed. That’s why a certain amount of water should be calculated for the amount of population of the fish.

Water

Everybody wants clean and healthy water with as little maintenance and hassle free as possible. This is highly attainable these days with all the available equipment and would only take a couple of minutes per week to maintain that healthy clear water. It does, however require careful planning.

This is a means of removing solid wastes from the pond water. These wastes comprise anything which finds its way into the pond and include dust, leaves, fish waste, insects, bits of stringy algae and anything else that doesn't dissolve in water. These particles must constantly be removed to allow the pond water to stay clear.

Mechanical filtration is generally provided by one of the following means:

High pressure sand filters - these are substantially similar to those used on swimming pools with a few notable differences. The Koi sand filter has an easily removable hatch which allows access to the coarse sand inside the filter. The chlorine used in swimming pools breaks dirt down to very fine particles which are trapped by the fine sand in pool filters and can be easily backwashed out of the filter. In a Koi pond however, the solids (fish waste, algae etc) form a crust on the top of the sand in the filter. The quick-release hatch allows the filter to be opened so that this crust can be broken up before backwashing. The sand used in a Koi filter is much coarser than the fine sand used in pool filters which would block in a day or two. Sand filters are quick and easy to clean and provide good filtration. Their compact design and efficiency have made them very popular in modern ponds. But you can't use a swimming pool filter for a Koi pond!

The only real disadvantage of sand filters is that it is not possible to really clean all of the sand. This eventually leads to a build up of dirt in the bottom of the filter which could ultimately cause anaerobic bacteria in the pond. Changing the sand is ineffective as the whole cycle would re-occur within a few weeks. We only recommend sand filters in situations where settlement chambers are not present.

Vortex systems, Nexus, the Answer etc are the cutting edge of high tech Koi pond filtration. They work well but are very large devices requiring a fairly large area near the pond to house them. Imported from the UK they are very pricy. One of these systems could increase the price of a medium size pond (say 10 000 litres) by 50%.

To conclude, we have found that systems which include a settlement chamber with suitable media - Brushes or Matala matting - provide excellent water clarity. A sand filter after that will slightly improve water clarity but is not essential. Most professionals and enthusiasts utilise these mechanical mediums.