Our Koi Pond

Its not over until the Fat Lady sings!!

2006-07-17T20:00:00.000Z

The EA Blanket Weed Inhibitor seemed to do nothing. My filter box was pretty clean, whereas when we were using Extract of Barley Straw I was having to clean it out twice a week.

So if I have to turn the pond blue then so be it!

Product No.3 is Blanket Weed-Kit. I have removed as much Blanket weed as I could and put the recommended dose in. The pond has turned blue so will have to see what happens.

I did a water test and found that the Nitrites had gone up, so the fish will have to be fed less for a while. Thats probably why the Blanket weed is growing at a rapid rate. Its a shame really as the fish were growing nicely.

Blanket Weed

2006-07-14T19:33:00.000Z

As you can see from the picture the long green strands are Blanket Weed, which I have declared war on!!

In the Spring we started using Extract of Barley Straw which was keeping the BW under control. However as soon as the weather got warmer it started to grow aggressively.

We are now trying EA Blanket Weed Inhibitor, however we are into the 2nd week or a 3 week dosing, and in my honest opinion its useless.

The fight will continue!!

Our First Fish Problems

2006-06-09T19:13:00.000Z

Katie (Pictured left) has started to spit her food out, and a couple of the other koi are flashing and have strange markings on them.

Dean Bland kindly volunteered his services to show me how to do a koi scrape and look at the results under a microscope.

For his troubles Katie decided that he needed cooling down and poor Dean got soaked!!

Thankfully all the scrapes were clean which was a relief.

We are going to try Katie on some medicarp food , and the unusual markings were just shimmies.

Where has the sunshine gone?

2006-05-30T21:21:00.000Z

We bought this picnic table two weeks ago so we could sit out in the sunshine, but it has rained ever since.
Tonight the temp is ment to hit zero and the pond temp has plumetted from 16c to 12c so perhaps the summer is over and back to winter.

Filter Maintenance

2006-05-20T18:33:00.000Z

Since we bought the filter the Jap Mat has always been configured like the picture, and in my opinion the water can go through the gaps and the pond is not being filtered properly.

The bay on the right has the brushes in it and due to all the heavy rain and wind was full of tree bits from the skimmer.

So today I got some more Jap Mat and removed all the small pieces and filled the bays up completely.

I am hoping that this will do the trick.

Never say never!!

2006-05-07T20:04:00.000Z

Gin Rin Kohaku 38cm.

The new showa was getting a bit depressed as all the other koi were a bit too small for her.

As soon as we introduced the new koi (Now named Bollard) they were chasing each other for ours.

Both fish doing really well and both always up first to feed. Should of really named him hoover as he leaves doesn't leave any scraps.

New Arrival - Dainichi Showa

2006-04-26T19:27:00.000Z

We would like to welcome a new arrival to our pond - Dainichi Showa 49cm.

She is a beautiful 3 year old koi, and we are very proud to be the new owners.

A late night trip on Tuesday night (25th April) to Consett to see Graham's Koi pond and his amazing koi. I only wish I had been in contact sooner, and of course been able to raid the hole in the wall a couple more times!!

Good luck to Graham for the future!!

So about 11pm we added her to the pond , and first thing this morning my daughter ran out to the pond and said "Wow daddy, that is a big fish!!"

As you can see from the picture below her size is a bit intimidating to the other fish, but they seem to be adjusting fine. She was last seen chasing after the Albino Sterlet who as I have said in a previous thread can motor!!
As for getting anymore koi, that will be if for a while as we will have to watch the water parameters and empty the vortex regularly until the weather gets a bit warmer.

Pond is now at 13 degrees.

Albino Sterlet

2006-04-22T20:58:00.000Z

Still not the greatest picture, however he fair motors in the pond and doesn't like posing for photos!!

The pond is at 12 degrees, so we are hoping when it gets warmer we may introduce a couple more koi.

At the moment we have 11 fish and two sterlets, so we do not want to buy too many.

Water parameters are all fine, just have to cross our fingers that when the pond warms up the fish will stay healthy.

Spring Cleaning

2006-04-09T19:33:00.000Z

Yesterday I dug the pond vac out of the garage and gave the pond a good hoovering. We have been using Interpet Extract of Barley Straw and it has worked amazingly well on the string algae, however there was alot of debris to suck up.

We have just bought an Albino Sterlet so do not want it getting caught up in the String Algae.

Having admired all the marvelous photos on http://www.yorkshirekoi.co.uk/ I went out last night with my tripod and digital camera.

As you can see the photo wasn't very good and I forgot to zoom in. Least you can see the Sterlet and a few of our koi. My goal for this summer is definately to get some better pics.

Our Fish & Construction pictures.

2006-04-08T15:37:00.000Z

http://www.koivista.com/display_series.php?series=259&page=0&id=169

If you follow the link you will see our koi. The pictures were uploaded to www.koivista.com on the 24th August 2005. Hopefully in August of this year we will be able to measure them and see a big difference in size.

Also hosted on www.koivista.com are the construction pictures of our new pond:

http://www.koivista.com/display_series.php?series=248&page=0&id=169

I hope you will find them interesting.

Welcome to my Koi blog

2006-04-08T15:06:00.000Z

This is our pond.

The dimensions are 3m * 2m * 1.5m with a raised wall 60 cm above ground. The filter is a Kockney Koi KF10000 with a Aquamax 8000 pump and UV. It has a side drain that will act as a skimmer. The pond has a liner, and is exactly 10,000 litres.

We started building it on the 7th June, and finished on the 20th september 2005.

This was our first pond which was built just as a fish pond to have some goldfish, comets and shabunkins.

However we bought some sterlets and then a couple of koi, and in no time the pond was far too small and after 18 months we decided it would need to be filled in, and we would need a bigger one.

I think there are not too many pond owners who can say they have only ever had one pond.