Ponds - Construction, Filtration, Retrofits, Biosecurity, Keeping Koi
This article is by Syd Mitchell, our Water Quality instructor extraordinaire! In this article, Syd discusses various techniques that work with different predators.
Article by Paula Reynolds
Tap water contains chlorine, a disinfectant that makes water safe for humans, but is harmful to fish. It is removed with a purifier, a dechlorinator, or a water treatment product from an aquatic outlet.
Article by Paula Reynolds
Water from a household tap, a borehole or well, or rainfall will have unique properties and individual chemistry influenced by the location.
More than three-quarters of the earth's atmosphere consists of nitrogen, yet only four-hundredths of one percent of the mass of the oceans, atmosphere, and earth's crust is composed of nitrogen.
One of the hard facts of life is that if you turn a hose on in your pond to add water and walk away, you will forget it and probably kill some fish. Yeah, this is not literally true but it hopefully gets the point across that if you leave a hose running in your pond, you'll almost certainly eventually forget it and kill some fish.
Filter maturation
Biological filters are not the only place in the koi pond and filter system where biological filtration takes place. Nitrifying bugs (nitrosomonas and nitrobacter) are prolific in nature, on land, everywhere in the aquatic environment, even in the air but it is only how they behave under water that is of interest to koi-keepers.
Is your pond too small to keep Koi? Or perhaps you have a large acquarium, and are tired of short-lived fish? Consider Goldfish! The live long lives, and comets can grow up to 12"! Even fancy varieties live for years, are very easy to care for, and like Koi - they have amazing recuperative capabilities! Read this story about how a fancy goldfish became this aquarium keeper's favorite fish...
UV (Ultra Violet) Lights are a good way to get rid of algae bloom (green water) during the warm Summer months. K.O.I.’s recommendations on UV units can be found in the Construction module (how to install) and the Filtration module (how to operate) of K.O.I.
UV lamps are usually isolated from the water media by a sleeve made of quartz that doesn't block UV. Those sleeves are durable, unless you accidentally break them, but the lamps are not. Vendors say that UV lamps need to be replaced every year. I was wondering how to test a UV lamp to see if we could prolong its life longer. I called a UV lamp manufacturer and found a way to verify if the lamp+sleeve assembly still emits UV, without resorting to an expensive UV test equipment.
A Koi owner in CT recently had to give up the hobby because otters would kill any Koi he put in his ponds. The following story is about a Koi owner in England who was finally able to defeat the otter the was killing his Koi and goldfish. Certainly straight-sided, deep ponds deter herons, but not otters!
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!If you're not havin' FUN, you're not doin' it right
