SkyCatcher wrote, On 26/04/2006 07:37:
i want to build a pond for koi in my garden. they wont be for showing - just
basic koi! i have plenty of space & building expertise & wont to avoid
common mistakes and pitfalls. can anyone point me to a suitable
book/website/resource ? i have googled and suffered information overload. so
i thought yoiu guys here might be bale to help me weed out the quality
information!

The amount of conflicting information really is overwhelming.
http://www.skippysstuff.com/pondbook.htm explains the most important
points really well. It's a US site, but all the information is equally
relevant to a UK pond. Wish I knew about it when I built mine, but then
I would not have known it was good advice (if you see what I mean).

I wish that I had known someone with a kio pond when I built mine.
Actually, come to think of it I did, but I tried to be too clever and
ignored the basics that actually make the difference.
If I had paid more attention to my friends pond I would have done well
to learn these things;

- Is it big enough?
No, so I should have made mine much bigger. Currently about 800 gallons.
I should have put in less shelves and more deep water. 1500 gallons is
what I want now, not places to put plants.
- Are they using an off the shelf "high-tech" filter?
No, they had a basic sand filter with plants growing in the top. Use a
method that you can see has worked for many years. I struggled with an
OASE filter for the first three years, it needed cleaning every week in
summer. I now use a homemade filter based on the Skippy design (see link
above if interested). It was fantastic last summer.
- Do they run outside every day to test the water quality and take
notes? No, but I was stressing out at every water change. Expect to
learn from mistakes in the first year.

Have fun,
DavidM
-also UK