How much would I expect to pay? And
there's probably other stuff I haven't thought of, seeing as how I
haven't done this before.[/color]

Yup, find out what you are getting yourself into, before you go into detail about cost.

Questions like, what are koi, what do they eat, what are their growth rates.

How do they cope best, between the extremities of winter and Summer...

What sort of problems can be expected keeping koi, for example coping with disease, disaster, breeding...

Consider the low density route (low cost, few fish, big pond) and the high density route (very expensive, machine intensive)

How much work is involved...

A few other subjects you may want to consider... water gardening can be a very useful stepping stone before making a big leap into keeping the most demanding of big pond fish.

An armful of books on water gardening, pond keeping, fishkeeping, koi keeping may save you a lot of grief which is usually associated with leaping into buying koi, before finding out what to expect

A shovel might be a useful next step, to start pecking away at digging through the Winter months

If you have the space and the inclination, a pond for koi can be as simple as buying a rather largish pond liner (100'x40'), and digging a couple of cubic yards a day, for a couple of months



Regards, andy
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