"PlainBill" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 8 Nov 2005 08:15:53 -0600, "Carol-Ann" wrote:


"adavisus" wrote in message
...

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.

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
==============================
All of this information can be found online, including right here. No
need
to buy books if one is on a tight budget. ;-)[/color]
===============================================
I'd say do the initial research online for convenience and a variety
of viewpoints. Ponding doesn't have to be expensive, but if $15 is
going to strain the budget, I'd suggest some other project.

## I have several pond books and can say I learned MORE online than from the
books. Our first pond was put in according to a Tetra Pond Book (a year
before we got online) and the information was awful. We have to redo the
berm on this first pond as we did the larger one this past summer. There
was little mention of soil types and how to stabilize the berm - and almost
nothing about predators.

The pond
'world' doesn't need another poorly designed, poorly constructed pond.

## Which you can make quite easily following the advice in some of the books
out there. The pond world doesn't *need* any artificial ponds at all for
that matter! LOL!!! :-) Ponds are fun, a hobby and certainly not
necessary for the world to go on.

Some people are on tight budgets and that should be considered - not
everyone has a 6 figure income.
--
Reel McKoi.... frugal ponding since 1995...
My Pond & Aquarium Pages:
http://bellsouthpwp.net/s/h/shastadaisy
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