As long as the water is not frozen that they are in they will
survive.I do not know exactly how cold thsat would be, but if you habd
a pond 4 feet deep and three feet of it was frozen solid, they would
still be fine in that foot of unfrozen water......as long as they
have an air hole or opening for gas exchange.....The big this is dig
it deep enough so the pond does not become one solid chunk of ice. I
do not know the frost level in your area but I would not think its all
that deep..For the most part my area sees hardly any frost yet alone
any ice. It does happen though. My water lines are buried a whopping 6
to 8 inches deep.....Never been frozen yet.......But temps have
dropped already and a 20 gal container of water with a goldy or two in
it has also became pretty much a frozen block of ice. I neglected ot
keep an eye on it, and to tell the truth I just up and forgot about
it. It did freeze pretty well close to completely, and had very little
space of unfrozen water for them to live in, yet the water lines
never froze. I guess it wa due to the fact the ground where water
lines run is in sunlight and exposed to suns warmth, where the half
barrel was on th enorth side in full shade of the house and no
sun.....but those two black moors did just fine.....I just measured
the temps in the three barrel feature as we have been having some
cold weather for here, and the water is 37 deg I guess the half barrel
is about 15 inches deep, and fully exposed all around to air......It
does have a thin skim of ice on one edge. The nearest preforms water
is still in the mid 40's as far as temp is concerned.....That ground
does offer good heat retention, and you will gain the heat lost fromn
a foundation into a pond if it is built close enough in lots of
cases.....Its unreal just how much heat can be lost through a
foundation. I dunno if youy all have slabs or basements, (more than
likely slabs) and even they will radiate and lose heat into the
ground. I guess once they get past a certain point they just go into a
hibernation......I know goldies and koi are in the speices of common
carp and minnows, and they all do just fine in the rivers and ponds
and dams that freeze up. I just have to believe if there is stil
sufficient water and gas exchange hole they will be fine...

On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 16:25:39 +0000, Gill Passman
wrote:

I'm actually leaning towards the planned pond being occupied by
Shubunkins/Comets - the reasoning behind this being, that for now, I'm
not convinced that I would be able to build a large enough pond to house
koi.

Living in an area where we can get heavy frosts I need to carefully
consider temperature drops in the winter (although not to the extent of
those in even colder climates) - this winter has actually been very mild
but I can't count on this. Obviously the pond needs to be dug to a depth
below the frost line to prevent the whole thing from freezing solid.
From recent observations of the reservoir for my water feature coupled
with the depth of my old pond and how far that iced up I'm pretty sure
that I can get the depth to avoid a total freeze up.....but I am now
curious how low the temperature can drop at the bottom of the pond
without it adversely affecting the fish...

TIA
Gill



-------
I forgot more about ponds and koi than I'll ever know!