Size doesn't matter when stocking. When stocking fish you have two things to
contend with:

Quality of life for a fish. You can keep a 18" koi alive in 1 gallon of
water but what kind of life is that? The 1000 gallons for the first koi is
so it has room to move freely.

Amount of waste and what you do with that waste. If you do a 100% water
change every day you can again keep a 18" koi alive in 1 gallon of water.
Instead of replacing water to reduce the amount of waste some people filter
the waste through bio filters to convert it and then use plants to absorb
it. There's no difference between he two. With each you're getting rid of
the waste. Now I doubt it's possible to do a water change with city water
for a 5,000 gallon pond every week just for the sheer cost of it. Even well
water costs money in electricity to pump it out of the ground not to mention
the time it'd take to do it.

Sam


"Chad" wrote in message
om...
I would like to know how many koi rec.ponder's are really stocking in
their ponds. I have seen the recommended stock postings, yet I wonder
what is really being done by the average pond enthusiast.

Preface, As of right now I have an approximate 1500 gallon pond with 5
Koi, 2 comets, 3 feeder goldfish(Don't really want them - just
inherited them) and hundreds of mosquito fish. In addition I have
ton's of WH, 5 water Lilies, Hornwort, Anacharis and a bunch of
marginals. But that is not where I started....

I built my first pond when I was 13, my dad bought a tetra flexible
liner and I dug the hole and put it in. We used this for a couple of
years then I swithed to fiberglass stock tanks then finally to
preformed liners. I had never had anything larger than 200 gallons.
For the first 8 years I had no plants at all - just fish. I started
with 12 Koi. Yes, 12. Nedra... get up off the floor. They were
all around 2-3 inches when I bought them. The first 2 years I kept
them outside in the summer and inside during the winter. Then in the
summer of my third year I was cleaning the pond when I had to leave
for a while and I accidently left the pump draining the pond.
Needless to say I lost 7 fish. Some to the lack of water, others to
sunburning. The remaining 5 fish stayed in the pond year round after
that. I never used chemicals for algae, nor did I have ANY
filtration. Frequent well water changes where it. We lost 3 of the
five during the 5 years I was at college. Not all at once, nor in the
same year. My remaining two fish stayed at my parents house until
1998 when I moved them to my 200 gallon pond I put in at my new house.
This was the first time they had ever had a filter, in addition I
started to use algae controllers since I was on city water and
couldn't change it like I did before. 3 years ago I almost lost both
of them to disease after a really cold winter and bad sludge problems
in the pond. At this time I had the two original fish plus 1 of the
koi mentioned above and the two comets in the pond. I medicated them
with a ton of medication and brought them back from sick curled up
floaters to healthy fish. Later that year I lost one of the two
original to the same disease. The other made it until last year when
he mysteriously died while I was on vacation. I examined him but
there was no sign of disease. He was 16 years old and had spent his
life in less than 200 gallons and was the friendliest fish I have ever
had.

So, I have read the rules. I have seen the wolves (maybe raccoon's is
more appropriate) attack those who admit to not following the rules,
yet my experience breaks the rules. I don't see many postings from
those who are apparently overstocking. Perhaps they are scared of the
raccoon's like I was. I know I cannot be the only one who has done
this, so I am curious what others are really doing.