my Zen Water Garden and Koi Pond

[MMAX]

You know of any places to get some nice larger sized koi at a decent price?

[AquaticFinatic]

I apologize if you have mentioned before but how do you winter your fish? I lost all mine this year so am after some tips. Same with des if he sees this. Tia

[Trabby]

Looks great!! I've had spent mothers day getting my waterfall an pond back online..... Love this time of year. We had 6 baby fish overwinter

[kien]

Originally Posted by MMAX

You know of any places to get some nice larger sized koi at a decent price?

Hmm, that kinda depends what you consider a "decent" price I've noticed over the years that Koi prices are all over the place. There are inexpensive "mutts" that are still attractive but not "show quality". Then there are true "show quality" koi that are insanely priced. Anyway, the best selection of koi in Calgary so far is the big box store. They have some pretty big koi. Again, I don't know if you'd consider them decent priced or not :-) Most of my koi I got a few years ago when they were 6"-8" and ranged in price from $11 to $100. A baby koi can easily double in size in a year! Feed them good high quality high protein food a lot and they will grow big and fast!

Originally Posted by AquaticFinatic

I apologize if you have mentioned before but how do you winter your fish? I lost all mine this year so am after some tips. Same with des if he sees this. Tia

Sorry to hear about your loss It's tough to lose koi because they are so personable. I over winter my fish outside in the pond and have been donig this for 4 years now with great success. For me, what has worked out well is to keep the surface of the pond agitated and moving, over the winter. This alone helps to keep the pond from freezing solid. On the colder days and nights the pond will still freeze down about 2 to 3" but this is a good thing. It helps to insulate the pond and keep windchill from continuing to cool and freeze the pond. The pump in the pond moving the water under the 3" of ice helps to keep the pond from freezing solid. Kinda like how parts of the river don't freeze over the winter because it's moving. In addition to this, it is very very very important to float a de-icer on your pond. You can buy pond de-icer's at your LFS. Note that these are simply meant to keep a small hold in the ice and not to warm the entire pond! This helps to keep a hole in the ice so that gas can escape from the pond. And finally one other thing I make sure of is that the very bottom of the pond, at 24" down is not disturbed by the pump. The fish will huddle down there over the winter and hibernate. It's warmest down there thanks to the heat of the ground. You don't want to mix water that's down there with water from the upper part of the pond that's colder. When I circulate the pond water with my winter pump I place it at the top 1 foot shelf in my pond (where my marginal plants normally sit).

Something else that I've done in the past as well is to build a hoop house over top of the pond. It's essentially a PVC tube structure (the frame), with clear pvc plastic draped over it. This acts as a green house for the pond over the winter and worked out well. However, it is added maintenance to set it up every fall and take it down every spring. Both methods (with and without the hoop house) worked for me.

Hope that helps.

[Delphinus]

Do you lose a lot to evaporation over the winter? The air is so dry here..

[kien]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

Do you lose a lot to evaporation over the winter? The air is so dry here..

Actually no, I don't find that I lose much water at all. I think once the ice forms over the pond that helps to keep the wind off of it which cuts down on evap.