I currently clean the drum and the area behind the water fall on an
alternating 2 week cycle. So this week I'll clean the drum, and two weeks
from now I'll clean the area behind the waterfall.

Cleaning in this case involves draining the drum, letting the pump refill
the drum, drain again. Hose off the muck, and drain that off as well. Then I
refill the drum with tap water. Two drums worth of pond water is about 10%

Cleaning the area behind the waterfall involves mostly siphoning off the
muck with a hose.

The 5 full grown are about 1.5ft long, the rest are about 6-8inches

Sameer

"JJ" wrote in message
...
"Snooze" wrote:

Actually, the most useful info you could have given us is the type and
frequency of the maintenance you currently are doing.

If I had to put a pond on "auto pilot", I would tap into a water
sprinkler timer pipe to add water in an nice aerating spray pattern on
a regular basis and adjust it so the pond would overflow slightly
(perhaps into a bog) every day so that would add up to be like a water
change. Obviously, if you have highly clorinated water or if
cloramine is used by your water company, this probably won't be a good
idea. (I guess one could add a metered dispenser of clor* neutralizer
but this sounds too complicated for me)

How big are 5 fully grown koi? Sounds like you have too much fish for
the size of pond... I would expect the koi to be able to "graze" for
much of their food and train the folks to feed them very lightly.

Jay


The pond is about 1200-1300 gal, estimated based on a rough estimate of
the
pond volume. The pond holds 14 koi of various lengths, 5 are full grown.
I
made a settling tank out of a 55 gal drum, which is filled with some
random
length of mesh, a few milk crates, and some plants rested on top of the
milk
crates.