I'm sorry if the above seems rude. I did take issue with your insinuation that Peter Waddington is clueless about koi though LOL.
I recently took the time to complete all of the coursework for the Certified Koi Keeper certification from Koi Organisation International. Since then I've been studying about how to manage the water at koi shows and how to judge koi. I'm taking online classes to learn Japanese. None of this makes me an expert. In fact, I can say that the more I learn, the more I realize there is a ton still left to learn. There are a lot of different levels of koi keeping. None is inherently better than the other but what is a simple issue to someone with one set of goals might be a much more complex issue to someone with a different set of goals.
I think it's fantastic that you've found something that works for you with your pond setup, your climate, and your size, quantity, and quality of fish. It clearly brings you a lot of joy and satisfaction--and that's the point of the whole thing.
If microscopes and TDS meters and ORP measurements and dissolved oxygen content and ozone use and reverse osmosis and the science behind the nitrification cycle and all of those "super wicked setup" things are unnecessary to you then that's 100% fine. What's important is that you enjoy the hobby and clearly you do--but that doesn't mean those things are unnecessary to koi keepers who have different goals than you do.
its ok, I have a bad temper and I get mad very easy as I am so tired of so called experts over the years tell me that it is impossible to keep koi in those low temperatures', that my water will super chill and the koi will all die, that I must have different type of koi cause koi just cannot be wintered in such extreme weather. Oh the stuff I have heard over the years is just unbelievable. My many friends on Facebook had to come to my defence after I got thrown off some top koi club cause I told them koi do very well in Ice Cold running water and that my Koi have been outside and alive since 1991. They just cannot believe that koi actually do extremely well in ice cold running water and that my koi are never sick, never had a dead koi in all the years I have had koi. It is true that the further south you go, lots of koi people have to battle so many paradise's and horrible disease and their pictures make my skin crawl. Back in 1991 nobody had much information on wintering koi and I never heard of anybody wintering their koi. I decided myself that they should be wintered as they are "cold water fish" and not "tropical". There is no such thing as "in-between, like half tropical. The Oxford Concise dictionary says that there is only the two. I also used to fish lots down at the creek and lakes and noticed that if you fish in the middle of the hot summer, whitefish and pike are horrible some years and taste like "slew sharks" and can be full of worms if the weather was too hot that summer. But if you catch them out of the ice, they are so perfect and very tasty. I decided I did not want sick fish and I never had much luck bringing them in for the winter as my first year I brought some goldfish inside and they got ick, they scratched and were not very healthy looking after spending the winter inside. I was very young back then. My very first pond was a very cheap pond back in the late 1980's and back then I just had goldfish. Then I bought my first two koi back in 1991. They were very tiny and I paid only two dollars for them. I picked the white one with a red head cause it has sparkles on its scales and I thought it was very pretty. The old gold one used to have lots of sparkles and now some of the scales have darkened, and I am told that is a sign of a very mature koi. I do everything myself, I don't like people telling me how it should be done, and a good thing or people out there m ight still believe that Koi are sub tropical and cannot winter or something. When I first got on this forum next to nobody wintered their koi, especially in ice cold running water in Canada. My UTube channel goes back quite a few years now, and it is my documented story of my ponds and garden mostly. So it is not like I just popped out of nowhere and claim my koi are 27 years old and I have wintered them since 1991. I have been on our local Garden tour in this town three times, and they usually never show the same garden home twice if they have to, but so many people were amazed that my koi do so well when so many others in town died over the years. The biggest difference is I left my ponds run while others used a bubblier, but they freeze shut after extreme cold, and a pond heater alone is not nearly enough, you need running water to flush out the ponds.
Then when I made my ponds, they are totally different than everybody's ponds as I used my own design and choose to run the ponds similar to the creeks and rivers, as they flow all year round and they break up the ice first in the spring as the water is flowing, whereas the ponds and lakes can take a full two months to "de-ice" here in Canada. I did not want my pond to be frozen that long and so back in the spring of 1991 I built my ponds to run like the creeks. My top ponds are for the largest koi as the upper ponds have the freshest water, and the bottom ponds should be marsh like and planted with large sedges as they are best at photosynthesis filtration. I have a very large yellow flag that floats in three feet of water and is planted in no soil, and it is very sturdy as the roots touch the bottom of the pond and the fish like to swim under those roots in the winter. I read about yellow flag water Irises and they are the only true water irises and during big storms they break away and float to the other side of lakes and that is how they spread. My floats so beautifully and lots of people marvel at it. It is also the best filter in the world, and the roots lick the bottom of that pond so clean in the summer, there is nothing left but black liner under that iris...
So you see I do nothing like anybody else, well everybody has their main pond the "bottom pond" I have a totally different style, my own style as I copy nobody, they copy me.... Its true, and I was the first to spin large stainless steel balls in my pond for better circulation and aeration with minimal evaporation and splashing. It creates the "river effect" on the surface of the water and they look so awesome spinning as well.
I tell it like it is, and well that peter wellington my be a koi expert with some things, he never wintered his koi in ice cold water with temps below minus 40 so he really is not an expert when it comes to wintering koi. Unless you have done it for many many years, then you really do not understand and that is why so many koi people in the UK are so afraid of winter. I get told even today by so many koi people from around the world, who seem to know much more technical stuff, that it can't be done.... after I have done it for 27 years. So you see, nobody can be an expert at anything they have not tried. Its simple logic and I only operate on logic, and that is why my ponds flow like the creeks and river as I learned of nature cause back in 1991 there were no Koi winter experts around.
Here is my koi at night last fall. The lights at night with the rushing water show off their shape so well, and they are very big, and I am so amazed as every spring after a long dark hard winter, they come up from the bottom, looking even bigger than before!
yes, you heard right, my fish eat super fresh grain free puppy chow, made right here in Alberta, and I have been feeding them that for at least 14 or 15 years now! Feel free to "creep me out on UTube" ha ha ha
. no wonder my koi are so healthy and well, cause I know what I am taking about even if I don't speak in your scientific langrage..
