Implanting a cycling system into a new pond...Possible?

[CliffandJoann]

LIkoi guy, where are you getting these koi and how big are they?
Would you consider getting just 12 to start off with?
They grow very big and very quickly.
How deep is your pond and what are the measurements?

 

[sissy]

koi take a lot of care and need a lot more oxygen and if I had the correct info before starting out I would never have gotten koi .Goldfish are so much easier and water quality is not as important to them as with koi .Water quality no matter what kind of fish is important but koi are fussy about that more .I have given babes away also with that warning and most only take 2 babies .

 

[CliffandJoann]

You've got that right sissy. Koi make a lot of waste, it's unreal the amount of waste that we take out of
our first tub each week. We also do aggressive water changes as well. We do them by adding water
each day, depending on the week we add between 35 to 40% of fresh water over a weeks time.
We use a gallon counter on our hose that shuts off automatically after it reaches the gallon amount
we set it for.
We also added in year two a 200 gallon biological pond filled with vegetation, that scrubs the water in it's path as it runs through before returning to the main pond.
Good filtration is key with a koi pond, especially when you're overstocked with koi as most of us are
including us!

 

[LIKOI]

Cliff, I ordered 2-3" butterflies from a breeder on ebay however sadly only 10 survived the burden of shipping. I will just raise those in my small pond and will integrate them into my larger pond once they grow some more. At that time ill probably need to expand filtration capabilities on the larger pond. Small pond is only 200gal and the larger is 1500gal with 3' at its deepest.

 

[CliffandJoann]

LIKOI, some advice for you...stick with the 10 for now.
There is a lot to learn about koi and pond keeping,
and a long winter to go through.
Here on LI the pond freezes down 8" so your fish will
be safe at 3 feet. You'll need an air stone to keep an opening
in the ice. We just have a regular aquarium air stone in our pond.
We house the motor in an upside down peanut butter jar with a hole cut in the
top for the wire to come through. we have the jar up on a stake to keep it
safe from the elements.

The 200 gal small pond, think about this...making this pond
a biological pond for the main pond. You can do this by
running the tubing underground back and forth between
the main pond and the big pond.
This will be a big aid to your pond filtration.
Joann

Just so you know, there are two pond nurseries here on LI.
Both have nice koi.
one is in Dix Hills, and the other in Northport.

this is our first koi Sunny, we purchased him along with a goldfish named spot in
September of 1997, they both made it through the first winter and are now both
14 years old. Sunny is Cliff's favorite fish.

 

[mikeinpgh]

I like the idea of making the 200gal pond the bio filter/pond. Maybe even a lilly pond.

 

[CliffandJoann]

Yeah, Mike, good idea.

We have our bio pond loaded with hyacinth and water lettuce, the long flowing
roots of the hyacinth do a fine job giving the water it’s final polishing
before the water reenters the main pond. There is no reason you couldn’t raise lilies as well
in a bio pond, as long as the water isn’t rapidly rolling along.
We have a 750 GPH running to our bio pond, by the time it travels the 18 feet
to the bio pond and runs through the pond it’s probably reduced to 450 GPH?

Lilies are suppose to like calm water, but we have lilies in the dog leg section of our pond,
in fact the lily we currently have is across from a small waterfall.
We can’t raise lilies in our bio pond because it hardly gets any sun, actually,
it’s practically in full shade all day.

 

[addy1]

All my stream ponds are full of plants, they do a great job of helping clean the water, Joann, totally agree with you. When I shut for the winter I am sure those small ponds, will have a lot of muck on the bottom that I will be vacuuming out. Can't even see the bottom of them due to the amount of plants (no fish) well unless some fry made it to them. Some fry managed to make it to our deck pond. Of course need to watch out for my trapdoors.....they have been making a nice group of babies in the big pond and the small ones.

 

[LIKOI]

Thanks for the advice Joanne.

Sunny looks like a real nice looking fish, I like the color pattern.

Good idea on the 200 gal being a bio filter, however that may be difficult due do distance and lack of sunlight. Not to mention, I just finalized the separate and exclusive plumbing for both set ups. I will leave them as is for now and see how things go, knock on wood so far water readings are good.

With regards to the nurseries in Dix Hills and Northport, are you referring to Suburban ponds and Scheres, respectively? If so, I've been to Suburban, they have an amazing set up but very pricey on the fish; I haven't been to Scherers yet.

Also, any idea where I can get aquatic plants for cheap / free? I feel like every place here wants a fortune for just a single Lilly.

 

[CliffandJoann]

LIKOI, yes scherrer and son's and surburban water gardens.
scherrer is less expensive.
how far away is your small pond? our's is 18 feet away from the main pond.

Yes, you can leave things status quo and always turn it into a bio pond
next spring. Our bio pond is practically in full shade. It really helps in the final
polishing of the water.
There is nowhere you can buy cheap plants anymore.

Last winter for the first time we over wintered water lettuce and this winter we're going to
try hyacinth as well. We have always overwintered taro, and umbrella palm.

the bio pond is the small patch of water on the upper right.

 

[LIKOI]

That's a shame, re: cheap plants.

 

[Waterbug]

Many species of Nitrosomonas bacteria have flagellum and live in the water column so the current pond will provide plenty. Other species will come in the filter. But the main thing is food. More ammonia, more bacteria. Doubling is measured in minutes, not hours or days.

Even without any seeding if you added ammonia you'd have plenty of bacteria in less than a week.

After the isolation period you can pipe the two ponds together to get max bio filtering. You are definitely in the fish farm range of fish loads. Chemical level have to monitored, backup systems in place, the works. Ammonia, while the most immediate need, is the easiest issue to handle at this kind of stocking level.

You might consider checking out some fish farm forums for more targeted info. Garden ponds and fish farming are really two completely different things. Things you're likely to run into will be talked about a lot in those forums and never mentioned here.

 

[Catfishnut]

This is a good thread and it is helpful to my own setup ideas.

As I was reading along, my personal recommendation was precisely what Joann (aka CliffandJoann) recommended - basically looping the two ponds together so that they will work together as one larger pond. I thought that this would be a fine idea for the bacteria culture thing and "kick-starting" the new, smaller pond.

However, as Waterbug stated, you would want to wait out a quarantine period, (isolation period) before moving the new Koi fish to the larger pond. Now, it is this part of it has me thinking. When you get into Koi fish, how much isolation and quarantine is required before you introduce the new fish to your main pond? Are there many parasites and diseases that could be transferred between the fishes? If you loop the two ponds together to make it basically one slightly larger pond, wouldn't sharing the water system defeat the purpose of the quarantine excercise?

I am raising this concern because I was pondering about doing a similar thing (sharing the same filtration and circulation system between two tanks). I say "tanks" in my case because I don't actually have a pond, I have two approx 1,000 gallon polyethylene tanks. My original plan was to just keep live fishing bait in them, but have been pondering raising Koi in one of them to sell in order to help make up for a small bit of the expenses for maintaining the system. However, I am now concerned that this might be a bad idea and a bad practice. My bait fish could transfer dieseases and parasites to the Koi, if the filtration system didn't isolate them sufficiently.

I can build a second, mirror system for my purposes and elliminate this problem (although it would be less expensive to share the filtration and water conditioning / circulation systems).

For your situation, Likoi, would connecting your two ponds together be asking for trouble when you get new fish in? If you were intending to use the smaller pond as an isolation center, I would be concerned that you may not have a true isolation system if you did this. Of course, if you did so, you would only risking your own Koi. However, for what I was planning, it might be an extremely poor practice. People who are in the "know" probably wouldn't want to buy my Koi if they knew that I shared a water conditioning system between the Koi tank and the bait-fish tank. They would risk their existing Koi stock being exposed to who knows what kind of parasites or diseases from the bait-fish and I certainly would NOT sell any Koi that I raised in this fashion to anyone who were concerned for their existing Koi if there could be a possible threat. We're not only talking money in this case, we're talking about, in most cases, someone's pets that they are very attached to.

Likoi, does my logic here make sense in regards to the isolation or quarantine issue for your setup? If anyone else can add input, that would be beneficial, but I think that you were intending to utilize the smaller pond as sort of a quarantine area in this case, if I understood you correctly.

I guess what I am asking everyone and what I am elluding to is... How much isolation and quarantine is necessary for Koi fish when you buy new ones or raise them to be sold to others for their ponds? What I have been digesting by reading here and other places is that Koi are very sensitive fish, to their environmental conditions, water quality, and to diseases, etc.

Is this correct? Or is it not quite that critical?

Gordy