Pond and Koi Newbie - Peepers Mom

[Peepers Mom]

Hi, everybody! I currently belong to another forum (Bengal Cats , so I'm not new to forums - just to fish forums. I've already received a couple of answers from this group about water quality and 'flashing', so I guess it's time to intro myself.....
My name is Karen and we live near Portland, OR in a nice wild rural area overlooking the Willamette River.
Last October we finished building our 6,000 gallon pond, completely rocked with waterfall and a wooden bridge. It's 16' (feet) wide by about 35' long, including the falls, and almost 4 feet deep in the center. (It was a six month project!) It's about 15' from the house so we can see it and the fish from inside the house, too - especially nice since it rains so much in Oregon!
We overwintered some 'tester' goldfish, which did great - even with ice on the pond last winter. 3 weeks ago we caught a 'wild' 11-1/2" red and black koi from a neighbor's outdoor 'lake' pond - it took 2 hours with nets and buckets, but this guy was worth it. We're hoping to get a couple more......... maybe. :lol: (Our hope was to catch enough of the wild ones so we wouldn't have to purchase many - but those guys are FAST!!!)
However, my husband was desperate to get more than only the one koi in the pond, so 2 weeks ago we purchased 9 beautiful babies (butterfly and regular). Now at two weeks later, they seem to be doing very well and eating good -- we've noticed a little bit of 'flashing' but not much, and we're now keeping a water quality spreadsheet, and testing twice a day. Water temp is about 62 degrees, everything else seems good. We're also adding salt to the water slowly, up to .1%. We have water lilies and a few other plants, so I'm afraid of damaging them with the salt, so will have to figure that one out, too. Oh, and we also have a lot of wild minnows (mosquito fish) that we caught with our large koi and they are doing well -- and of course, we've got resident tree frogs......:lol:
We're having fun with our little koi, and I've been doing lots of research on how to keep them happy and healthy. It's sure different from cats, dogs and kids....!!!
I've already been searching quite a bit in this forum and the information is incredible. I look forward to spending quite a bit more time on here and learning more!
Here are a few pics of our pond as we were building it (all the rocks and boulders came from our own place), up to how it is now, and our new fish. (I have yet to figure out what 'kind' they are, so if anyone can tell, please let me know!

 

[addy1]

Welcome!

very nice! I don't know koi but someone might be able to help you

 

[j.w]

Peepers Mom

Just goldies for me so I can't help either but they look like nice fish. Lot's have koi here to help ya out. Yeah and talk about the rain here eh? I think our part of the country is going to be one big fish pond soon and all the fish will be swimming through the neighborhoods :lol:

 

[taherrmann4]

Welcome. Really like how you did the bridge. Ever since I finished my pond I have been trying to figure out how I could do something like that, maybe when I redo it or the next pond. Nice looking pond.

 

[addy1]

That is a really neat bridge, beautiful work.

 

[j.w]

Wow you have two ponds and two bridges................I had to go back and look twice cuz I thought I was seeing things cuz one pond looked big and one pond looked smaller but bridge looked the same...............anyways looks very nice, all of them :lol:

 

[Peepers Mom]

Thank you everyone for the nice welcome so far! I definitely will be getting into your pics - it's fun to see what everyone else is doing! We've got a few goldfish in the pond, too - they think the little baby koi are cute little girl goldfish.... ha ha! There's so much on this forum to look at and read - I know I'll enjoy it a lot!

 

[addy1]

Maybe the same pond, just being filled jw? look at the rocks they look the same. Either or it is a great job!

Sigh I am confused now lol! can't decide one pond or two lmao

 

[j.w]

Ok I think you are right.........looks like a wacky type day for jw. Just ignore everything I say and do today. Had a rough yesterday and today. Kitchen sink backed up and we tried everything to fix it cuz we are soooooooooooo THRIFTY. Well took 2 days and finally have it draining perfect now. Had to buy a snake and a rubber blow tube to put on hose and blow it to kingdom come........made big mess, cleaned it all up, got sidetracked in between re-organizing the pantry for some reason..............I get that way at times........do this and that leads to something else.............lots of things finally get done all in one day and only started out on one thing, whew, now what? :lol:

 

[addy1]

Laughing jw sounds like me, honey calls me piddly, just like his grandma! always piddling on something, which leads to another to another.........

 

[Peepers Mom]

Ha ha! I don't think I could have survived building two ponds... still feeling the effects of it, LOL! It's just one; the 'empty' pic was before it was filled, showing how we did the rocks. As it was, we just went into all of it blind, but somehow it managed to turn out good. The bridge we also just figured out as we went along; we used 'plastic lumber' 4x4"s for the posts, the rest of it is cedar & bolts, and bolted cement footing blocks at different levels to accommodate the different depth levels. I'd be happy to share details for anyone interested. Thanks for the nice comments!
(And plumbing problems are no fun..... especially Today!!! )

 

[j.w]

Yes you fooled me and at least my poor hubby finished all that plumbing rigamarole early on this lovely rainy Father's Day................Happy Fathers Day to all the dad's whether they be kids dad's or fish dad's :lol:

 

[fishin4cars]

Welcome aboard!:regular_waving_emot Love your pond! Very nice! That bridge is awesome! Love to see some pics of that being built and the how too's! I may can help with the koi but will need pics a little more close up. The biggest one the orange and black is a Hi bekko.
I see and hear a few concerns with your pond. One is the rocks in the bottom, be aware they trap a lot of debris which can cause anaerobic bacteria problems. Many don't feel like they are good or needed for a pond. I too have rocks in the bottom but there are cons to having them. Make sure you keep a good flow of water in the pond itself and if possible blow water into the rocks either when filling the pond or with pond water, yes it will stir it up but it's better to be cloudy for a few days than that stuff staying down in there rotting.:lol: Also, be careful adding wild caught fish, You mention flashing, introducing fish and not quarantining them and watching them before adding to your pond family is the easiest way to introduce parasites/serious problems. Last thing I want you to know and be aware of, the little mosquitofish can reproduce like crazy. Not hard to overpopulate a pond with those tiny little guys. I have seen and heard of several parasite introductions over the years when adding them from the wild. If you start getting large #'s of them you may have to destroy or kill them:yikesu: It's not good to reintroduce them back to the wild, you could introduce a parasite or non-native fish back into the wild and cause natural environmental problems for your area. Not trying to be all negative, just pointing out points of interest as they appeared to me. I also want to say, again, very beautiful pond and glad you joined the group.

 

[Peepers Mom]

Welcome aboard!:regular_waving_emot Love your pond! Very nice! That bridge is awesome! Love to see some pics of that being built and the how too's! I may can help with the koi but will need pics a little more close up. The biggest one the orange and black is a Hi bekko.
I see and hear a few concerns with your pond. One is the rocks in the bottom, be aware they trap a lot of debris which can cause anaerobic bacteria problems. Many don't feel like they are good or needed for a pond. I too have rocks in the bottom but there are cons to having them. Make sure you keep a good flow of water in the pond itself and if possible blow water into the rocks either when filling the pond or with pond water, yes it will stir it up but it's better to be cloudy for a few days than that stuff staying down in there rotting.:regular_waving_emot Also, be careful adding wild caught fish, You mention flashing, introducing fish and not quarantining them and watching them before adding to your pond family is the easiest way to introduce parasites/serious problems. Last thing I want you to know and be aware of, the little mosquitofish can reproduce like crazy. Not hard to overpopulate a pond with those tiny little guys. I have seen and heard of several parasite introductions over the years when adding them from the wild. If you start getting large #'s of them you may have to destroy or kill them:yikesu: It's not good to reintroduce them back to the wild, you could introduce a parasite or non-native fish back into the wild and cause natural environmental problems for your area. Not trying to be all negative, just pointing out points of interest as they appeared to me. I also want to say, again, very beautiful pond and glad you joined the group.

Thanks, 'fishin4 cars'....! Yeah..... we've been learning of all the potential negatives - after the fact.... ;} Since we didn't have any fish in the pond except for the few little goldfish, we didn't consider quarantining then, or know a lot about it at the time. Soooo...... they're all in there now and we're hoping we didn't introduce any little nasties. Hoping the low salt level will help ward some of that off. Should have done the plants, too. :lol: Definitely will do that on any new ones from here on out, tho!
I've heard that about rocks on the bottom, too -- we just have so many natural rocks available to us, and well, they're pretty...... :lol: So far, there's not much buildup, and we also just did a complete pond cleanout a couple months ago (getting rid of algae using the pressure washer), so it hasn't built up much since then. Good to know about stirring it up occassionally and getting it out of there. We have a large water pump we can use if we need to do that later. We also have been trying to keep the bacteria level up to try to keep gunk buildup and water clarity under control. Still experimenting with that - any suggestions on a good product? We've used EcoFix, but are out of that, and it has seemed to help when we've used it. I've been looking at the Microbe Lift products. We also have a good filter system installed, and lots of circulation through the pump and waterfalls. We go out there occasionally with a broom :lol: and sweep any large buildup of algae off the rocks and then net it as it floats toward the skimmer; and change the filter on the weir frequently. That is a bit of work but helps. Also last fall we netted the pond to keep the leaves out. We're also trying to build up our plant population to help, and not overfeed the fish.
I also put a little 'gutter guard' barrier just under the top water lever at the skimmer to keep the little minnows out of it -- I guess if I get too many, I can just take it down and let them go thru the skimmer..... :yikesu: I'll watch for an overpopulation of them. Thanks for the heads up on that, too!
So, it's going to be a lot of 'learning curves' for us I know, but hopefully we won't have too many problems getting things figured out! We're learning that we need to be very cautious with how we do things from here on out.

Thanks for the offer on helping me i.d. the koi -- I'll try to get better pics if I can. And to finally know what 'Piper' is..... ! I'll try to find some more pics of how we built the bridge and post those, too. THANKS!

 

[CometKeith]

Hi Karen, Your pond is beautiful and the surroundings look great as well. Enjoy your pond and welcome to the forum!