New pond owner here I have a winter question.

[dkishton1486]

Hello all. I just made a homemade pond recently and now with winter approaching I have a total pond water filter I bought from a box store pictured below.

Now my question is this. Should I take this and the pump I have running to it out of the pond for winter? Now the weather has not been freezing yet but I have noticed a loss of water flow from it already. Would it be best to just bring the filter and pump in for the winter? I do have 2 air bubbles in the pond along with a circle water heater to keep an opening in it for the koi.
Thank you for your time.

 

[Mmathis]

Hello and welcome!

Where do you live? How big is your pond? How many koi do you have?

 

[dkishton1486]

I live in Northeast Ohio. Pond is small 800 gallons, there are 6 koi in there

 

[j.w]

@dkishton1486

 

[Lisak1]

Welcome @dkishton1486 !

I'm guessing this is an external filter? I wouldn't risk running this all winter - I fear it would crack. Pull the pump and make sure the lines are empty.

Next we need to talk about your six koi in 800 gallons...

 

[brokensword]

Welcome @dkishton1486 !

I'm guessing this is an external filter? I wouldn't risk running this all winter - I fear it would crack. Pull the pump and make sure the lines are empty.

Next we need to talk about your six koi in 800 gallons...

go easy on him, Lisa; don't want to scare him away too quickly...

 

[dkishton1486]

Welcome @dkishton1486 !

I'm guessing this is an external filter? I wouldn't risk running this all winter - I fear it would crack. Pull the pump and make sure the lines are empty.

Next we need to talk about your six koi in 800 gallons...

I too thought 6 was too many but the guy I bought them from (koi fish pond breeder) said that 6 is a good number for my pond even though I disagreed with him

 

[brokensword]

okay, I'll start; the 'general rule of thumb' re koi seems to be 1000 gallons for the first one and 250 for any thereafter. Sooooo, doing the math...

Thing is, and @Lisak1 can come by and show you her handy dandy fish poop chart, koi can get to 30+ inches. That's a lot of fish and when they begin to grow, the water conditions are going to be a challenge to keep up with. We get a lot that first show up here on GPF due to sudden fish loss/problems. You get the hint why.

 

[Mmathis]

Back to your original question..... Those fish are going to require as much oxygen in their water as possible. The bubblers are a good idea, but you might want to suspend them just below the water surface (pool noodle work well for this) — just MHO, though. Gas exchange takes place on the surface anyway, so there’s really no reason to keep the water churned up. Yes, a surface heater or a way to keep a hole open in the ice (again, for gas exchange). About the pump and filter.....it depends, and I’ll let others chime in on this issue. I live in the balmy Southern US, so my pond stuff runs 24/7/365.

Do you by any chance have plans for a much larger pond in the immediate future? If not, this might be a good time to consider re-homing those koi! It’s sad that a koi breeder misled you (unfortunately we see this a lot on here), but no, 800 gallons will not support 6 koi — one, maybe.

 

[addy1]

Welcome to our forum!
Sorry the koi guy mislead you, as the koi grow the fish are going to get in trouble and eventually the pond will not support the fish.
For your pond I would look into shubunkins, they have great coloring and are called the poor mans koi!
I have shubbies, love them, I have a big pond still have shubbies. They are so easy to care for.

 

[Lisak1]

Ugh. It's bad enough when we hear "oh the teenager at the pet store said my pond could hold XX number of fish" but when it's someone who should know better, that's even worse! Yes, your pond is fine for 6 young koi... but those koi will grow fast and furious. I'd contact the guy and insist he take them back. Your pond isn't even large enough for one full grown koi quite honestly. Do people do it? Yes. But there will come a point when something happens that creates that point of no return... and that's no fun.

Stick around - everything you hear from this group is shared with the best of intentions. We want to see happy pond owners with ponds full of healthy fish!

 

[dkishton1486]

Thank you everyone for your input. I will start looking into expanding my pond asap

 

[addy1]

Thank you everyone for your input. I will start looking into expanding my pond asap

And you will need some great filtration for the koi, the filter you have will not work well.

 

[dkishton1486]

And you will need some great filtration for the koi, the filter you have will not work well.

Yeah I am noticing that already. What is a good filtration system for them?

 

[sissy]

WELCOME koi do get large I wish someone had told me 1 of my koi is now over 3 feet long .I built my own stock tank filters and put plants in the filters and lava rock and only trim the roots of the plants or divide them .I grew banana plants in my filters and hosta plants and once they got big enough I divided them and planted them on my property .I am hoping to get a couple of hundred hosta plants to plant here like I had at my NJ house under my trees .Plants clean the water really great .I may try a small scale hydroponics system next year to increase plant production of the hostas .Plus the banana plants i give away and the elephant ears also .I love giving them away to people here .This year I gave 30 banana plants away and over 50 elephant ear plants .I keep a list so I know how many .Forgot all the cannas I divided up