25 Years of Mistakes,

or

The phrase "Twice done is well done" is attributed to Benjamin Franklin.  The idea is that the first time we do something, we say, this is good but it would have been better if ...  When you do something the second or third time, you should, hopefully, take advantage of your previous experiences and not repeat your mistakes.  I have done a lot of things twice, and a few things three or four times.

I do not know who said that "A wise man learns from the mistakes of others," but here is a  partial list of my mistakes.  Every pond I have built has been both a learning experience as well as an improvement over the previous pond.  The following list is a twenty year compilation of my 'stupid and inadvertent mistakes.'  The list is in no particular order.  If you have any questions, or if you want some 'free advice' on how to avoid any of my 'past' mistakes, email me at KoiLover@Adelphia.net. 

1.  Every pond is too small.

You always want what you can't have.  Bigger ponds hold more koi and they allow the koi to grow larger.  Oddly enough, it takes almost as much time and effort to care for a large pond as it does to care for a small pond.  I have built five ponds, each bigger than the last.  If I ever move, I will buy a house with a pool and convert the pool to a pond, and it still won't be big enough!  My advice is to build the biggest, deepest pond that you can afford and that will fit in you landscape.  Unfortunately, in a year's time, it will still be too small.

2.  Decide whether you want a koi pond or a lily pond but not both.

A koi pond should be at least three feet deep while a lily pond should have a depth of no more than eighteen inches.  The eighteen inch depth is one of the problems of a lily pond, the other problem is pond cleanliness.  If you buy small koi and put them in a lily pond, they will ignore the lilies for a while.  When you eventually introduce a new 'larger' koi, the new arrival looks upon the vegetation as 'his' personal salad bar.  Then all the koi start working on the plants.  The broken leaves, stems, and spent blooms fall to the bottom and start decomposing and composting.  This decomposing plant waste takes lots of oxygen out of the pond and upsets the filter.  The bottom becomes dirty and stagnant.  A shallow pond also attracts predators such as raccoons.  These critters sit in the lily pots and go after your koi while tearing up the lily plants.  A koi pond also needs the depth to maintain water temperature.  Deep ponds are temperature stable, shallow ponds are not.  My first pond was a combination pond.  My second and third ponds solved my problem by building a deeper pond for the koi and using the second pond for lilies.  I now have one lily in a forty gallon pond shell purchased at Home Depot, and that is enough.      

3.  Be careful of liners.

My first pond was built with a liner.  Twenty years ago there were no 45 mil thick EPDM liners.  Liners were then 8-10 mil thick vinyl that was sunlight sensitive.  The life of a liner was one-to-two years.  I even put old carpet between my liner and soil to protect the liner.  One problem with liners, including EPDM I think, is that the deeper you go, the more pressure there is on the bottom which can cause problems if the site was not prepared properly.  When my pond was built, the builder, Serenity Ponds, put a a layer of concrete over the liner in order to protect it.  Some of the pictures in my 'present pond' section show this layer.  EPDM liners used on properly prepared ponds with depth less than five feet are probably okay, but deeper ponds should probably be made of concrete or gunite.  Be careful to cure the concrete or gunite if you do go this route.  

4.  A pond can never be too deep, within reason.

Obviously the koi in a pond that is too deep can not be easily viewed or enjoyed.  Pond volume is the product of the pond's surface area multiplied by the average depth.  There are then two ways to increase a pond's volume: increase the surface area or increase the average depth or both.  A deeper pond is more temperature stable.  In late summer the difference between the daytime high temperature and nighttime low temperature where I live in Southern California is about thirty degrees Fahrenheit.  The temperature in a shallow pond could vary by up to ten degrees during the day while a deep pond's temperature might vary by only a degree or two. Ten degree shifts stress koi while two degree shifts do not.  Deeper ponds also provide more volume for the koi to swim in.  The minimum depth of a koi pond should, I believe, be four to six feet.  The deepest pond I have seen was one in Singapore that was ten feet deep.  This thirty thousand gallon pond was designed to provide an optimum environment for a dozen jumbo koi.    So a deep pond is temperature stable, provides a koi with volume to exercise in, and increase volume.

5.  Watch out for bamboo, especially running bamboo.

Think about it, if you are 'pondscaping' a koi pond it obviously needs some bamboo accents.  Bamboo has two behaviors, some form tight clumps and the rest send out runners that can pop up ten feet away from the  main clump.  A friend gave me a small clump of 'black bamboo.'  Black bamboo's stalks turn black as the stalk matures.  Black bamboo is very much sought after, hard to find, and expensive.  I eagerly accepted.  My little clump was well behaved for two years, but then it sent out runners which randomly popped up through the liner of the pond.  After trying to patch hole caused by the fifth runner, I gave up and bought a fiberglass pond.  I still have some black bamboo, but it is in a big plastic container (purchased at the local Home Depot) and so far the pot has contained the runners.

6.  Filter design is composed of at least three stages, do not ignore any.   

Every decent pond filter system that I would consider installing has at least three stages.  Some of these stages may be combined.  First, there must be some type of mechanical action to break up or isolate large clumps of wastes.  Second there must be some stage where the aerobic bacteria can break down the ammonia, nitrates, and nitrites in solution in the pond water.  And finally there must be a stage that increases the pond's aeration.  Mechanical filtration can be achieved by vortex filters or pre-filters.  Pre-filters combined with a bead filter form an effective mechanical stage.  Biological filters require surface area where the aerobic bacteria can adhere combined with a source of oxygen.  Area can include the sides and bottom of ponds, the roots of water hyacinths, the surface area of beads in a bead filter, toilet brushes, gravel, or filter mat also work, as well as an old favorite making a return, barley straw.  Aeration can be accomplished by water falls, air stones, venturi pumps and fountains.  What should not be used to increase oxygen saturation are any plants where the green part of the plant is under water.  (Water hyacinths float on top, only the roots are underneath.)  Photosynthesis creates oxygen from carbon dioxide during the day but at night sub-surface plants take oxygen to create carbon dioxide.

Some people are advocating a fourth filter stage to remove trace wastes by diverting a portion of the output to either a veggie filter or trickle filter.  The jury is still out but the addition of the fourth stage can not harm and might actually help the water quality.

In May, 2004 I attended the annual Koi Seminar at Mystic Koi in Upland.  The special guest was Peter Waddington, author of Koi Kichi.  Waddington does not believe in bead filters.  In a bead filter system water is drawn through a pump into the bead filter and discharged typically to a water fall.  Fish waste are ground up by the pump and pushed into the bead filter where the wastes collect and cause the filter to start to backup.  Waddington urges a three stage filter where water is drawn through the filter by gravity.  The pump is located at the end of the last stage and pumps clean water back to the pond via the waterfall.  The first stage of Waddington's filter is some type of waste settlement stage so that 'big' wastes are removed and never processed.  The second stage is based on Japanese filter mat.  The third stage is filled with kaldness media and is heavily aerated.  Kaldness media is an artificial media designed for maximum surface area and minimum possibility of clumping.  By aerating the media, it is turned into a floating bed which is very efficient at releasing gases and breaking down ammonia.  Kaldness media is used in the Nexus filters by Evolution.   

7.  Aeration and circulation are a major part of filter and pond design, and must be included in any pond.

All the pond building books tell you to plan for pond circulation.  The usual stated reason is to force the fish to exercise by swimming against the current.  I am now convinced that there is an even more important reason.  Circulation prevents stagnant water and it moves pond debris towards the  drains and skimmers.  Stagnant non-moving or slow moving pond water contains oxygen only at the surface and it has reduced or non-existent oxygen density at the bottom of the pond.  Good circulation gets the fish wastes to the biological filter where they are drawn into the filter system to be broken down.  If all your fish are gathering at the waterfall gulping air, particularly in the morning or on a hot day, your pond has insufficient oxygen density.  These two problems can be solved together.  One method is to buy a high capacity pond air pump and half a dozen air stones.  The air stones add oxygen to the pond and the air bubbles bring the bottom water to the surface of the pond.  This does not add current but it does reduce stagnation while increasing oxygen density.  A venturi, which is essentially a water jet that sucks air into the pond, increases both oxygen saturation and adds current.  One hot August day in 2001 all my fish were under the waterfall, and it was clear they needed more oxygen.  They weren't eating and I was worried.  I searched the internet using "koi pond aeration" on goggle and was lead to the Oxymax site where I read an article about oxygen levels required by fish.  Using some left over plastic irrigation pipe I made a simple but inefficient venturi aerator and the next day the koi were happy, hungry, and energetic.  I eventually bought an efficient 'meg2' model venturi from Oxymax and installed it.  In ten days the water went from 'sort of' clear to crystal clear.  Even though I was feeding the koi more, the bead filter required less service.  When it did need back flushing, one rinse was sufficient.  

Jeff, the owner of Oxymax, has some unconventional ideas about filters.  He notes that the aerobic bacteria in a filter can also live on any pond surface, not just in the filter chamber.  Aerobic bacteria are those that use oxygen to break down the fish wastes.  By increasing the oxygen saturation, the bacteria grow on the sides and bottom of the pond effectively increasing filter capacity.  His site lists a page of benefits from installing an "Aerocleaner."    His ideas about filters are described here at the bottom of his home page.  If he is correct, we are all paying too much for our filters.

My current pond initially originally had two sources of aeration, the waterfall, and the aerating chamber on the upflow filter.  When the koi were small (average size under 10"), that was enough.  Now that the average size is closer to 18", the oxygen needs of the fish AND the aerobic filter bacteria are higher.  The venturi aerator was a great,  cost effective solution.  

I have a question for the reader.  Do you ever wonder how your local koi dealer keeps the water in the display and selling ponds sparkling clean?  Why all the fish for sale are always hungry?  I bet that if you examine their display and selling ponds, you will see a biological filter, several madly bubbling air stones on the pond's bottom, and one or two venturi aerators.  Do they know something we don't know, or do we just refuse to acknowledge it?  

As I mentioned in 6 above, I met Peter Waddington.  He believes most ponds are under aerated.  He doesn't trust waterfalls to aerate water.  While I use a venturi to aerate my pond, he uses air stones and such.

8.  Koi are ultimately judged on size, confirmation and pattern.

What makes a good koi?  What makes the price of one koi thousands of dollars and a similarly sized koi just ten percent of that?  As I see more good koi, I am staring to understand the difference.  The most important thing is size.  Big is better than small.  Prize winning fish are often near three feet in length.  A bulky shape around the gills and body, typical of the female koi, is better, even though two of my favorite three fish are long slender male types.  Evidently female koi grow larger than do males but I don't know why.  And finally color pattern is the third most important.  I originally had it reversed, but it is hard to grow a jumbo koi, those over thirty inches, with good confirmation and great color pattern.  I have about thirty fish in my pond now.  The average quality of the koi in my pond has been going up, but it still has a long way to go before I reach my goal of fewer but higher quality jumbo koi. 

9.  Koi bloodlines do count.

I once thought I would try to 'pull a fast one' by getting a large number of fry and raising them.  I figured if I could buy a bunch of fry cheaply, then ten percent of the fry ought eventually grow into very good show quality koi, another ten percent ought to grow to be average or select koi, and the rest would be plain pond quality or below.  The area where I live is near many golf courses so I figured I could 'dump' the 'junk' koi in some nearby water hazard.  After phoning around I lucked out.  Somehow a tancho kohaku (a white koi with a big red dot on its forehead) and a showa (an essentially black fish with white and red highlights) had accidentally bred in the isolation pond at Laguna Koi.  The folks at Laguna Koi had decided to see if they could hatch and raise the fry.  The fry hatched, they got rid of a bunch of all white and all black fish, and suddenly they had more small koi than they wanted.  Normally breeding a tancho and a showa would be like breeding a greyhound to a dachshund.  All the issue are dogs but no puppy has any value, but I did not think that this analogy applied to koi.  I was wrong..  Anyway, I made the one hour trip to Laguna and purchased 50 fry at two dollars a piece.  The picture below is what I ended up with.

Now what did I end up with?  My first mistake was to put them in my large pond instead of isolating them.  They were small enough to be sucked past the guard on the bottom drain and into the strainer.  I lost about a third of the fry to this calamity.  The next spring I was unlucky enough to have an outbreak of hole-in-the-side or ulcer disease and mouth rot.  I will give shots to good big fish but not to 5 inch junk fish.  I isolated a bunch and treated them with oxilium food and added salt to the main pond and isolation pond, I was now down to half of the original fry.  Two and half years later the fish were all about twelve inches long.  All the little tanchos lost all color, so they became 'white' fish.  A bunch could be charitably described as aka bekko (an all red fish with black markings) but that would be charitable as aka bekko's have patterns of black, not random dots.  Several are all orange.  Three of the fish are half interesting, and these three plus two others were all I kept.  Two are of these are showa and one is a black and white fish.  I gave the rest to several friends with backyard ponds and the rest to Fairplex.  Those of you who went to the L.A.County Fair in Pomona might have seen these koi in the big lily pond next to the outdoor train exhibit.  I would have been time and money ahead to buy four or five fifty dollar fish.

10. Water quality can not be ignored.

Maintaining water quality is an art.  Koi prefer a ph of about 7.4, they do not tolerate high nitrite or nitrate levels, oxygen saturation should be high, and chlorine or chloramine levels must be very low.  There are low cost test kits that can test these levels and simple remedies are available at any koi outlet worthy of its name.  If the proprietor will not help you learn to maintain your water quality, find another dealer quick.   

11.  Koi are not just carp, they require an optimum environment

Every koi lover has had someone tell them that koi are just carp or fancy goldfish.  That is true but koi are selectively bred and must be pampered to get optimum growth and color.  Every serious koi enthusiast has a different idea of what an optimum environment is.  Water quality, temperature, and diet all play a part.  I am constantly learning.  One only needs to look at the advertisements in KOI-USA to see the ideas that others have. 

12.  If you over-populate your pond, you must make special allowances.

There are several formulas for determining the maximum number of koi that a pond and its filter can support.  The koivet has a complicated formula while the simplest formula that I have seen says one foot of koi length per square yard of surface area is about right.  They are all, in my opinion, guesses.  Two ponds of equal volume can have much different koi capacity if their filter systems have markedly different efficiency in removing fish wastes, particularly ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates, or are maintained at different temperatures, or are feed at different rates.  My current opinion, subject to change, is that if you can maintain oxygen saturation at the pond's current temperature, population, and filter configuration, then the pond is not over-populated. 

13.  It is less expensive to learn from the mistakes of others.

Make every effort to attend koi seminars.  Ask your dealer what they think about your problem.  Most experts are merely people who have either made more mistakes than you, or know about the mistakes others have made and are smart enough not to repeat the mistakes of others.  The problem is that the causes and consequences of a particular mistake are open to interpretation. 

14.  Question the experts, too much current koi knowledge is intuitive and anecdotal.

Human beings are creatures of experience.  My experiences and the relative weight I place on them bias my opinions.  I am big now on oxygen saturation.  Recognize this and grow from it.  As an example there are many different ideas of how bubble bead filters work.  A good bead filter works very well in ponds with high oxygen saturation, but it is my opinion that no biologically based filter works unless the water has good oxygen saturation.  Bead and other high flow filters need, in my opinion, lots of oxygen.  They do not work well in a oxygen deprived pond.  Diet is another area of great controversy.  There must be twenty or thirty brands of koi food, and each brand must have half a dozen different types.

15.  No matter how perfect your pond's environment is, it can always be improved.

Whenever you visit some koi outlet or go on a pond tour, ask yourself what you can learn.  No two koi lover's ideas about environment are the same.  What works for one person might not work for another person because of some hidden element.  There is usually a reason for everything regarding koi environment.  Unfortunately different people interpret the same facts differently.   Right now there is a group of people who believe that an artificial grass reef in the pond will improve environment.  See advertisements for aquamat.  The manufacturer claims that these mats house aerobic bacteria that convert waste into essential micronutrients.  True or false?  Clearly the mat increases the surface area for biologically active aerobic bacteria.  What else do they do?  Question but be open to new ideas.

16.  All koi diets are not equal.

I know nothing about diet.  The two things that are now generally accepted are that a koi's immune system needs vitamin C and that koi food with corn meal must be avoided.  Currently I rely on the expertise of the koivet.  As a veterinarian, he should have some educated guess about best nutrition.  He has praised three different foods.

17.  Always try to relate your koi's pond environment to their natural environment.

This is almost self-evident.  If your pond succeeds in recreating the natural koi environment, your koi will be happy.  My biggest goofs occurred when I forgot this.  A water fall will not provide all the aeration your fish need if the water temperature is above eighty degrees or if the pond is over-populated.  For five years I watched in smug self-satisfaction as the bubbles from my water fall aerated the pond.  My smugness ignored the fact that my koi had grown and their oxygen needs increased.  

18.  Water temperature is important.

Believe it or not, some people are now starting to heat there koi ponds.  Koi seem most comfortable in a pond set at 74-76 degrees Fahrenheit.  Koi are cold blooded animals.  The cooler it gets, the slower their metabolism becomes.  When the temperature gets below sixty, the digestive system of the koi essentially turns off.  In fact there is some evidence that suggests that their immune system turns off at low temperatures too.  In the spring, as the weather and pond temperature warms up, the bacteria that causes hole-in-the-side disease will do its dirty deed.  As I understand it, the koi's immune system takes its own sweet time to turn on.  There is evidently a temperature range where the koi have no defenses, the aerobic bacteria in the filter are not working yet but the bacteria that cause hole-in-the-side disease and mouth rot flourish.  See koivet for expert information.  Obviously if you had some valuable show koi, the expense of heating would be less than the cost of one koi.  Many koi keepers are using a biological product lymnozyme to control ulcer disease. Lymnozyme can not hurt and the literature is promising enough that I will try it for a year.

19.  Every pond needs both a bottom drain and a surface skimmer.

Every pond should have at least two drains, in case one clogs up, located as far from the waterfall as possible and in the deepest part of the pond, and a surface skimmer.  With drains on the bottom, bottom sometimes stagnant water is taken from the pond and run through the filter system.  This forces water circulation but it does not guarantee that the fish waste are gathered and flushed into the drain.  The drawing of the water from the bottom also helps increase even oxygen saturation.  This lack of mixing can occur if there is not good circulation.  A skimmer draws all the floating junk floating on the surface.  This makes the koi in the pond easier to view and prevents surface waste such as leaves from littering the pond bottom.    

20.  Don't skimp on any mechanical thing that moves, like valves.

The filter system on my pond has, believe it or not, about ten valves.  Koi can get copper poisoning so you must use only all-plastic valves.  The best valves are Jandy brand Neverlube valves.  There are five pool gate-type valves in my pond used to equalize flow from the two drains and the skimmer and to equalize outflow from the bead filter to the two upflow filters.  These valves are hardy ever used.  They are now essentially frozen.  The Jandy brand valves are twenty dollars a piece more.  I wish I had not been so cheap by saving a dollar then.  

21.  Try to place the pump below the water level.  

Efficient pumps for koi ponds are low pressure high volume pumps.  Swimming pool pumps pump less water but pump it at much higher cost because they are high pressure pumps.  If a pump is placed below the pond's water level, water flows into the pump naturally, so a smaller more cost effective pump (remember the pump is using electricity twenty four hours a day) will provide the same flow cheaper.  Of course you have to make sure that pump stays dry, unless it is a submersible pump

22.  Don't use a portable 'doughboy' raised swimming pool for a pond.

I had a pond with a leak in it and thought that a raised 'doughboy' pool would make a great temporary pond.  A 2000 gallon pond for $200.00 dollars, what a deal.  Besides, it was spring and they were on sale.  Within hours after purchase, I had the pond assembled, filled with water, and the water de-chlorinated.  I transferred the koi and several hours later they started to die.  I put the survivors back into the leaking pond, and made a bunch of calls.  This was before the internet and search engines.  What I found out was that swimming pool liners must have a fungicide embedded into the liner for the purpose of preventing athlete's foot.  I was told to get two gallons of pool chorine (Pool chorine is 17% concentration while good old chlorox is just 0.5% concentration so 34 gallons of chlorox bleach from the grocery store will also work.) and dump it in the pool, wait 24 hours, drain and wash out the pool, then refill and de-chlorinate.  I eventually lost half my fish, but I used that pool for two years before it too started leaking.

23.  Controlling green water.  When all else fails, try using a UV light.

I guess I have been lucky, until December 2001,  I have never experienced the frustration of 'green water.'  I don't mean green tinged water, I mean 'pea soup' green water with six inch visibility.  I had signs of a parasite problem (koi flashing) and decided to follow the advice in the Koi-Vet site and the December issue of KOI-USA, I bought 120 pounds of salt and then raised the salt concentration to 0.3% over a three day period.  About a week later, the pond water started turning green.  Two weeks later it was pea soup green.  I tried 30% water changes, using a good chlorine treatment, for three weeks.  If anything, the water seemed to get greener.  Since it was December and the pond water temperature was 52 degrees, I had not been feeding, so I could not stop what I was not doing.  The filters were clean, the venturi was pumping air, and I was sure the pond bottom was clean.  I decided it was time to fix the 120 UV light from Aqua-UV that was part of the original pond.  Like a typical fluorescent tube, the bulbs in a UV system need to be replaced yearly.  In a 120 watt system, there are three bulbs at sixty dollars each.  I gave myself three UV bulbs for Christmas.  One week after turning the system on, the water went from 'pea soup' green to greenish with two feet visibility.  One week later the pond's bottom was visible.  The water was a 'light' murky green.  After three weeks the water was crystal clear again.  One week later I turned the UV lights off.  I am now keping the UV system on standby.  I guess the ads are true, UV lights will clear pond water.  I don't think a UV light can prevent bacteria infections because the intensity is not high enough to kill pathogenic bacteria.

I have been asked why I haven't left the UV lights on continuously?  First, there are two types of algae: string algae and green water.  UV lights only work if the algae passes through the UV light assembly, and string algae stays put.  Green water is pumped through the UV light assembly, so the UV clears up green water.  If the filter, venturi, and pond chemistry are in balance, the water will be clear.