Pond Upgrade

[Waterbug]

I hadn't seen that formula before...but that's fine. I guess some kind of ballpark estimate is needed. Yours is as good as any other.

My wife is pretty cool. As part of my next pond project she's OKed having at least one pond inside the house. But I don't think it makes sense to her, but she likes different things.

 

[buckry]

Yeah, it's certainly just a starting point. I mean, 2000 gallons now with 3" fish I could probably keep 100, but I certainly don't want 10 to die every month as they all grow. That's just cruel. So I did that math, came up with 12 adult koi and bought 12 baby koi. It's going to look strange for a couple of years but I don't really care.

So if she ok'd at least one inside pond, how many does that translate into? 3? My wife wasn't too thrilled that I ended up with an aquarium in the house last year for my pleco.

 

[sissy]

Sorry but I can't imagine having that many fish in a pond and being able to keep it clean or healthy no matter what .I have 13 fish and my pond is around 10x24 with the water fall area and i feel i am over populated and my pond is around 4 1/2 feet deep and can be a hassle at times to keep it clean .i just don't have the time to do that and take care of the property .I guess if i had nothing else to do it would be fine but I also want time to sit and enjoy my retirement and enjoy the sound of the water .I think my next thing will be a pondless water feature no fish and not as much work and you still get the sound .Filters ,netting ,filter tanks ,water quality ,health of fish ,feed for fish ,water testing and all that can be a hassle at times .I have seen to many houses foreclosed on with abandoned fish ponds and ponds that are over populated and left go by the owners because they get tired of the work or get frustrated because it is not working out for them .Less fish in a pond means less work and much easier for someone just starting out in ponding .The pond is a big enough learning curve so don't make it to hard on yourself or you will give up and get frustrated .

 

[JenH]

Like someone else mentioned, 2 ponds are good if you do not want your koi and goldies to breed. Mine are all in one pond together, and I'm hoping they do population control themselves eating the eggs and frogs too. But if they do breed together, from what I've heard their babies are kind of a blackish color and look most like a goldfish with barbels, and the babies are sterile. I wouldn't stress to much about the number of fish you have. Just keep an eye on your ammonia levels and if they start getting too high you'll know there are too many fish. I have a 1000ish gallon pond 3 ft deep, and I have 4 koi, and a bunch of goldfish, probably around 25 or so, most of the fish are in the 5" range, 2 are 7-11" (goldies) My ammonia always tests zero. The water garden place around here that does installations has several ponds are their grounds with 15-20 large koi in them and guessing I would say they are around 2000 gallons as well, so I think as long as you built good filtration you will be fine and maybe even have room to add a few more down the road.

 

[buckry]

I still think the important point here is fish size. 12 teeny tiny koi are not going to pollute 2000 gallons of water. It's going to take years for them to mature, and if I don't learn enough to be efficient in 2 or 3 years then I'm doing something very very wrong. Look at my goldfish pond, it's crystal clear right now and it has 24 fish in it including the 12 aforementioned koi. If they're not ruining that 200 gallon pond they're not going to ruin my main pond any time soon.

 

[sissy]

My koi are 8 years old and were only a couple of inches long when I got them and were 10 inches long after only 3 1/2 years and now hitting the 2 foot length and i have 2 large filters and going larger on both of them .I am hoping the slow down there growth or they are going to have to go to the pond at the other house as it is bigger .It was 20x30 but had a natural spring running into it and now have it down to about 20x20. I have not had problems with ammonia or ph yet .But there is always that chance and once it goes it goes fast .

 

[sissy]

hey waterbug I remember back in the 70's when they built some California ranches by my childhood home it was the big thing to have a small pond by the entry way .I guess it was a zen thing or drug thing ,hippie style not sure :razz: I was the flower child that went to woodstock but my parents took me ,not my choice of fun .

 

[Shdwdrgn]

@buckry - I agree that size is everything... The fish are fairly small now, but as you said, over the years I expect to fine-tune my filtration. I also expect the plants to grow in thicker and suck up more waste. And I also expect that at some point through the years, I may lose some fish to predators. On the other hand, most of my koi were selected for their characteristics, and over the years I plan on watching for any fancy offspring to keep for myself, while selling off others, so rotating my stock is also a consideration in my own equations for my pond capacity. There are just so many variables, that it really is all just guess-work.

@sissy - how often do you feed your fish? Mine get fed usually every day, and my oldest koi have hit about 16" in four years (although they were about 3" when I got them, so they may have already been a year old?). With all the plants they have available to nibble on, I've been considering backing off to only feeding every other day to see how they do.

 

[sissy]

I only feed mine once or twice a week and they get some fruit when it is in season .Like today they got some blueberries and strawberries from my garden .I do give them some of those OSI koi treats in blueberry ,orange and strawberry .Not sure of there size anymore but no it has to be at least 2 feet or more and they were only 2 inches long when i got them from the fish farm in NC .I have only ever lost 1 fish and he jumped out last year ,my fault as I did not get the nets on in time .I was busy trying to get the other house closed on.

 

[buckry]

Well, you know what then? I'm going to order some new koi right now then. My pond will definitely support 18 3" fish, and as they grow I can decide where to go from there. This will give me the benefit of putting in some fish I don't really care too much about and can give the pond a shot without worrying about killing any of the fish my kids have named. I'll worry about getting rid of some in 2 years when they are starting to really get some size.

And if cross breeding koi and commons makes ugly babies I'm definitely going to keep them seperate. I think if they all eventually die or get eaten, I'll fill that pond in, but for now it's going to be around for a while. Thanks for the input all.

 

[buckry]

I just logged on to my favorite pond website, and the first thing it showed me was butterfly koi which I have none of. That's perfect, I was really regretting not getting any in my first batch of 12, so now I'll have 6 of those. THis worked out perfectly.

 

[Shdwdrgn]

Regarding the comment on ugly babies... There was another thread I was reading last night about hybrids, and I honestly didn't think they looked bad, plus some interesting traits can come from the cross-breeding. So I guess *ugly* is in the eye of the beholder. I keep koi, comets, and shubies all together. I know there is going to be some cross-breeding, so I'm curious to see what comes of it.

I love butterfly koi! I also didn't discover them until later on, but 3 of my 9 are butterflies. I have one in particular, a platinum ghost butterfly, that has beautiful streaks of black through his fins... he's 6 or 7 inches now and just keeps getting better looking all the time. Definitely my favorite so far!

 

[buckry]

I know, the fins are so much more interesting then normal koi. Absolutely gorgeous.

 

[Waterbug]

hey waterbug I remember back in the 70's when they built some California ranches by my childhood home it was the big thing to have a small pond by the entry way .I guess it was a zen thing or drug thing ,hippie style not sure :razz: I was the flower child that went to woodstock but my parents took me ,not my choice of fun .

For me the idea came from ponds inside Victorian homes.

 

[Waterbug]

How many fish to have in a pond is a strange thing. I've seen large ponds that couldn't support hardly any fish because they were kept poorly. I've seen small ponds with a large number of huge Koi because the pond was kept so well. And I've certainly read many threads of people losing fish in "normal" ponds because they knew nothing about ponds, like even that chlorinated water would kill fish, or never knowing about testing water.

The common denominator is knowledge, not pond size.

Koi in good quality water, well fed, can grow very fast and get very big. Normal would be like 5lbs at 5 years, 17lbs at 10 years. Fish vary greatly, and females can get bigger faster. I was reading of a guy raising Koi fry and grew them to I think 10" in the first 2 or 3 months which is a lot, but then lost the entire tank because he thought he was over feeding and didn't realize there was a build up of uneaten food in the tank.

In many backyard ponds Koi can grow very slowly and maybe only get to be half their expected size. I think most of it has to with the amount of food fed, and then may less than good water quality. Most backyard keepers are feeding once a day, maybe twice. Higher end keepers are feeding 8-12 times a day and keep very good water quality.

If you want a formula forget fish size or number. Instead use amount of food. There are some web sites that discuss computing the amount of ammonia a fish will produce given a certain amount and type of food. They use that info along with ammonia conversion rates of filters to compute the number of fish the pond will support. Most people probably don't want to go to that kind of trouble, but I do think it demonstrates the relationship between food and filter and shows how unimportant the relationship between pond size and fish.

It just comes down to what a person wants for their pond and what they're willing to do to get that pond.