The primary concern of any koi pond keeper, indeed of any fish pond keeper, it to preserve the pond water at a high level of hygiene. This basically means that you have to keep the nitrate and ammonia levels down. However, the fish will not help in this endeavour, and nor can they, since they live and defecate in their surroundings, the water. You can accurately say that the live in their own toilet bowl.
Therefore, it is up to you, as their patron, to keep their water as clean as possible. This is actually not so difficult and much or the cleansing process can be automated, leaving you, the owner, to only have to carry out routine, weekly checks.
The first check that you should carry out can be made on a daily basis if not more often, when you give food to your fish, does the water look clear? Is it green? Are there loads of leaves floating around in it? If it is translucent enough to see the bottom of the pond, you are probably doing OK, but do not rely on that, wait for the weekly chemical check up.
Never forget that you have manufactured an unnatural environment for your fish to live in. It is closer to nature that a fish tank, but it is a long way from being a river or a duck pond. This is why the bigger your pond is, the easier it will be to maintain, because the closer it will be to the real thing.
The smaller your pond, the more that you will have to depend on water filtration and aeration systems to keep the water crystal clear. One way of helping to maintain clear water is not to over feed. Most fish pond owners give far more fish food that the fish require.
This results in more excrement and more rotting food on the bottom of the pond. All this excess energy in the water is happily soaked up by algae, which will also draw the oxygen out of the water as it blooms. If you find yourself in this position, the first thing to do is reduce the amount of fish food and scrape the sides of the pond of algae. If you do not, the lack of oxygen will stress out your fish and stressed fish are more susceptible to disease.
Keep the water in your pond circulating as much as possible, as this will reintroduce oxygen into the water that the fish, algae and plants have used up. The standard ways of doing this are to have a fountain, a waterfall and an oxygenator (or bubbler, like you see in fish tanks).
Another way of dealing with oxygen and algae issues is to not overstock your fish pond. Koi will breed freely, so if you just start your population off with a few fish, you will soon have many more. They know when there are too many of them and they will eat the fry or control the breeding in other ways. If you do all you can to give your fish a good environment, they will do the rest.
Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on many topics, but is at present involved with fish pond accessories. If you are interested in a Solar Powered Pond Pump, please go to our web site now for some special deals.
