On Mon, 5 May 2008 10:45:33 EDT, wrote:

I'm interested in keeping Koi, but even a cursory glance over the
literature is giving me second thoughts about a few issues. Here's a
description of the pond:

Size: about 8 x 8m (24x24 feet)

Depth: around 50 cm ( 2 feet)

I wouldn't give up on koi unless you want to raise competition fish
instead of just pretty fish to enjoy. If you want to keep competition
fish of high quality ranging from $250 for a fish that probably will
grow into a real winning fish to several thousand for ribbon winners,
I would suggest you are screwed and must begin again with a very deep
pocket full of money.

OTOH I've just posted a picture of a pond Joanne and Wayman's pond
that is only about 2' deep and has no bottom drain also has stones
covering the bottom and these things are all wrong, so who cares,
since Joanne and Wayman like their pond and the sight of their fish
and don't give a hoot about the finer shape, color, competition,
Japanese terminology and price someone else is willing to pay for a
fish. They simply enjoy their pond and fish. I hope you can find a
way to work things out and enjoy koi too.
--
Hal Middle Georgia, Zone 8
http://tinyurl.com/2fxzcb

You also have to think about plants growing through the grid and how to
handle that.

Easy. No plants.

You have to imagine how large koi get. They easily reach two feet in length.
I've seen them in a foot of water, but I felt very sad for the fish. Imagine
you are 6 feet tall and live in a room 6'-2" high.

Point taken.

Koi was just the first thing to come to mind and then of course there
was the huge Koi pond in our Hotel over the Easter break that got me
thinking..

Goldfish on the other hand never had it better ;-)

Any other cold water fish that would fair well in that depth pond?

wrote:

On May 5, 7:59 pm, Derek Broughton wrote:
wrote:

I also wouldn't mind
heating part of the pond with an immersion heater,

That will cost you a fortune.

I've read that this is fairly commonly done, just to keep an "air
hole" open during the winter. I've seen Jaeger do some pond heaters
that are of similar power to those used in a biggish tropical tank.

Sure, but in a tropical tank, it turns off much of the time - you're only
trying to keep the temperature slightly above ambient. If you put a heater
into a an 8m x 8m x .5m pond, it will be on _all_ the time that there's any
ice at all. Even a 300w heater consumes 7.2kWh per day. I imagine
Luxembourg's electricity rates are a bit higher than mine...

Not really. It would be a good idea to insulate those concrete walls,
between the concrete and the liner, with at least 3" of foam insulation,
but then conductance from the soil beneath the pond should keep it from
freezing solid.

Too late..

I was afraid of that. It's really not a commendation for your landscaper...

3) lighting during the night?

No idea, but you'd want a switch anyway, wouldn't you? There's no point
leaving the lights on if nobody is there to see, unless you're thinking
of
it as a safety feature (being able to _see_ if your child's in the pond -
in which case motion detector external lights are probably more use).

It's actually going to be on one of those fancy light level detectors
and timed to switch off at midnight..

Then I don't see it being a problem.

LEDs so it shouldn't consume too
much electricity. The pond is actually quite a feature for the lounge
(!?) as one of the walls is completely built in glass.. thus the fancy
lighting at night.

ooooh! jealousy /
--
derek

wrote:

You also have to think about plants growing through the grid and how to
handle that.

Easy. No plants.

No plants!!! What's the point...?
--
derek

OTOH I've just posted a picture of a pond Joanne and Wayman's pond
that is only about 2' deep and has no bottom drain also has stones
covering the bottom and these things are all wrong, so who cares,
since Joanne and Wayman like their pond and the sight of their fish
and don't give a hoot about the finer shape, color, competition,
Japanese terminology and price someone else is willing to pay for a
fish. They simply enjoy their pond and fish. I hope you can find
a
way to work things out and enjoy koi too.

Thanks Hal,

I can see that there are different schools of thought on the
newsgroup.

I don't really care about having the best(est) fish and would enjoy a
couple of nice small (but healthy) Koi.

A lot of aquarium fish simply stay small in a smaller tank, ie. large
tank - large fish, small tank - small fish

Is this the same with the Koi?

There are of course aquarium fish that do grow irrespective of the
size of their habitat..

On May 6, 3:52 pm, Phyllis and Jim wrote:
Although people would like more depth, you can in fact keep koi in
your pond. The rule of thumb is 1,000 Gal for the first koi and 100
for each additional one. Your pond is something like 7,000 US
gallons. It is a bit on the shallow side, but if it will not freeze,
they will survive fine in it.

Cheers.

I am trying to imagine a metal grid for an 8 meter pond!

I'm going to see it on Saturday if everything works out ok..

A lot of us would want to encourage you to have your gardenr work out
some sort of veggie filter rather than only a mechanical one. Saves
work!

Yes, just like the plant aquarium keepers.. a bit late in my case and
I can't imagine plants looking right in this pond.

You can fit a bottom drain and have a waterfall, even if it is not
built in.

Excellent. I'll have to do some further reading up now that I know
that there might well be a point to it.

Keep us posted, or post some pics or drawings somewhere. Folks will
have lots of ideas for you.

Will do.

Our pond is 12 x 22 x 2 and has handled the koi fine for more than a
decade. You can see it on our google profile link.

I'll have a look now.

Thanks again.

No plants!!! What's the point...?

We just wanted some water in the garden and the landscaper came out
with this substitute swimming pool idea and it plays much that role
(minus the swimming of course). Nice gently watery sounds and water
reflections inside.. just imagine the pan pipes playing in the
background ;-)

wrote:

A lot of aquarium fish simply stay small in a smaller tank, ie. large
tank - large fish, small tank - small fish

That's not really true. Fish in small tanks tend to be stunted by poor
water quality. Experiments have shown it's possible, if you keep the water
quality good, to grow fish to practically fill their container.

Is this the same with the Koi?

There are of course aquarium fish that do grow irrespective of the
size of their habitat..

Because somebody keeps the water quality up...

That said, an 8m x 8m x .5m "aquarium" is much bigger than what most people
keep koi in. It's not the actual size that's a problem, it's the depth.
Koi develop better with depth, but I think they'll cope fine with it -
assuming that ice doesn't get too thick.
--
derek

On Tue, 6 May 2008 09:53:24 EDT, wrote:

You also have to think about plants growing through the grid and how to
handle that.

Easy. No plants.

UV & lots of frequent small water changes then. ~ jan
------------
Zone 7a, SE Washington State
Ponds: www.jjspond.us

On Tue, 6 May 2008 13:59:36 EDT, wrote:

Yes, just like the plant aquarium keepers.. a bit late in my case and
I can't imagine plants looking right in this pond.

We're not talking aquarium-type plants. See my webpages. ~ jan
------------
Zone 7a, SE Washington State
Ponds: www.jjspond.us

~ jan wrote:

On Tue, 6 May 2008 13:59:36 EDT, wrote:

Yes, just like the plant aquarium keepers.. a bit late in my case and
I can't imagine plants looking right in this pond.

We're not talking aquarium-type plants. See my webpages. ~ jan

Well, he does have a glass wall, so he _could_ have aquarium type plants.

I understand (no, probably better to say "recognize" - I don't really
understand) the concept of formal, unplanted, ponds, but I just can't
imagine actually _doing_ it :-)
--
derek

On Tue, 6 May 2008 13:59:34 EDT, wrote:

A lot of aquarium fish simply stay small in a smaller tank, ie. large
tank - large fish, small tank - small fish

Is this the same with the Koi?

Can't say for sure. Lots of people have opinions, but few have enough
tanks and do controlled experiments to prove their opinions. I did
see the 5 koi (One died shortly after arriving.) and 35 shubunkin I
got in a box grow nicely, the 4 koi that survived in the 1500 gallon
pond were all slightly different sizes. The female (not the biggest
of the 4.) produced some that grew almost a large as she in what
seemed like a shorter time than it took the original 4 to reach that
size. Another thing mine were long fin or butterfly koi and short fin
seem to grow bigger. I boarded a couple short fins for a guy working
on his pond, he said was 600 gallons and they were bigger than any of
my long fins living in 1500 gallons.

"My guess" is the amount of feed available and genes has as much to do
with koi size as tank size within reason. Reason being 1000+100
gallons for each additional koi and/or adequate filtering as a start.

Ten of the biggest I've seen more than once were in what George (the
owner) said was about 800 gallons of gin clear water with adequate
filtering. George was a former aquarium keeper too and he spent a lot
of time tinkering with his filters. I'm sure you will get a handle on
things and find your own way, just hang in.
--
Hal Middle Georgia, Zone 8
http://tinyurl.com/2fxzcb

On Wed, 7 May 2008 09:54:14 EDT, Derek Broughton
wrote:

I understand (no, probably better to say "recognize" - I don't really
understand) the concept of formal, unplanted, ponds, but I just can't
imagine actually _doing_ it :-)

Ditto. I'd still want a healthy growth of fuzz algae and a well planted
veggie filter as a back drop. Truthfully the coolest thing, imo, is seeing
the fish swimming in and out of the plants. ~ jan
------------
Zone 7a, SE Washington State
Ponds: www.jjspond.us

NO FISH. to keep it clean you may need to use pool chems, or an ozonator. I would
think a grid that will hold a child would be an eyesore!!! it would have been better
to use a motion detector with an alarm to signal the child is near the pond... or in
conjunction, a water scarecrow to douse the child if it got close to the pond despite
your warnings to stay away.

I am afraid your gardener is a twit. this is likely to be a green stinking mess in a
couple months. and no way to clean it.

it is easy to construct a nice sounding fountain out of a barrel sunk in the ground
and filled with large rocks so there is no standing water. much cheaper too. and
could have put a few plants in there. little to no work at all keeping it clean.

On Mon, 5 May 2008 10:45:33 EDT, wrote:

Hi everybody!

I've been a keen freshwater aquarist for over a decade but I'm totally
new to outdoor ponds and I'm not sure whether the pond that our
landscape gardner is currently giving the finishing touches to is
actually suitable for fish.. a few words of wisdom from the experts in
this group would help me decide whether it's worth getting my hopes
up..

I'm interested in keeping Koi, but even a cursory glance over the
literature is giving me second thoughts about a few issues. Here's a
description of the pond:

Size: about 8 x 8m (24x24 feet)

Depth: around 50 cm ( 2 feet)

It is built with a liner on top of a generous layer of sand and the
sides are made up of a concrete block wall.

The whole thing will be covered by a metal grid to make it safe for
our baby. This should be placed an inch or so BELOW the water surface.

The gardner has already installed a fairly hefty multi-chamber filter
of (very) approximately 300L (60 gallon?) and an ultra-violet unit.

They've also currently planned a series of fairly powerful underwater
green lights.

A lot of things give me concerns there and this was clearly never
planned as a Koi pond..

1) depth: is it at all deep enough to keep koi or any other fish?

The filter will obviously be kept running during the winter months and
I imagine that this will help with the freezing. I also wouldn't mind
heating part of the pond with an immersion heater, but it might yet be
too shallow for a Koi and/or winter. I live in Luxembourg between
Germany and France, so we don't have Scandinavian winters but
temperature do occasionally drop under -10C.

2) metal grid/ child safety

Are Koi surface feeders? would I be able to feed them properly? will
it stress the fish?

3) lighting during the night?

I'm not sure yet how strong this lighting will really turn out to be,
but is this a problem for Koi?

I'd appreciate your thoughts...

Best regards,

Frank