I was wondering how you all figure how many koi your pond can hold. I had a real problem with green water for about my first 3 years of ponding. I tried all kinds of things. I ended up getting a UV light, and that has made the world of difference for me. Anyway, in the meantime of trying to figure out how to get rid of the green water, I contacted a place that sells pond products quite frequently. The man there told me that I was overpopulated on fish. My pond is 2000 gal, and at the time I had 3 koi and about 20 goldfish. I have since gotten rid of all the goldfish and only have koi. I have 5 now. He pretty much told me 5 koi would be my maximum limit. But that just doesn't seem right to me. And then today I read in a post "Any Koi Lovers?" by weggy12, that someone has a 5000 gal pond with 70 koi. If you do the math, that is 71 gal of water per koi........if you apply that concept to my pond, I should be able to hold 28 koi rather than only 5. Thoughts? Jenny
Koi Population
i use this method.... one inch of fish per gallon of water, but thats just me... make sure you have a good filter and test test test your water
For me the more plants and water circulation you have the healthier your water/fish. You can overpopulate as long as you have some method to pull out the waste from the fish. My mother has always used plants and a bog filter for this(I am just starting my pond). Keep your water well oxygenated, circulate that water! I like water Hyacinth for nutrient export. I got rid of my pea soup water within 3 days by adding 50 hyacinth plants to my 2300 gal pond. It went from barely seeing fish just under the surface to seeing bottom clearly. My mother has a greenhouse where she keeps her tropical pond plants over winter. In the spring she always gets pea soup water but within 24 hours of putting all the plants into the pond from the greenhouse her water was crystal clear.
At Laguna Koi Ponds they give this adivice on their site-
We generally recommend a ratio of two hundred gallons of water to each koi if proper filtration is present. Keep in mind that koi will grow, with their greatest amount of growth taking place in the period from birth to three years of age, and plan to accommodate a larger fish than the one you purchase. Crowding of fish usually leads to a buildup of pollutants in the pond and resultant deterioration of fish health, substantially reducing their life expectancy. Also, from a purely aesthetic viewpoint, a less crowded pond is generally more attractive than a more crowded one. At the very least, you should provide one hundred gallons of water per koi, unless you are certain to move them to a larger body of water in the future.
A big part of population control is filtration. I've been keeping fish since the early 70's and, at one point, had 12 aquariums in a townhouse for a short time. (aquariums are notthe least bit fire proof). I say that not to set my self up as "the knowing contributer" but to preface my remarks with a nod to my own tendancies to over-populate. I have had to contend with overpopulation since day one and ultimately grew weary of adding more aquariums to accomodate! So, being an unmedicated OCD "suffer" (suffer? I LOVE every minute of it!), I decided knowledge was preferable to ongoing emergencies and seemingly random deaths. Some decades later, I still enjoy reading, experimenting learning and enjoying my feeshes ... and I continue to push the envelope of maintaining a healthy population.
My experience has been this: how you stock an aquarium or pond is significantly driven by your filtration system and how well *oxygenated* your water is. My current pond is relatively small: it's 17' x 7', the deep end is roughly 42". Not a lot of water, I know, however ...
Aeriation:
I have a waterfall that has a combined drop of about 5 feet and a waterflow width of roughly 22" average. Over that waterfall I push roughly 5,000 gallons per hour of water from two different pumps (one's a 5,300gph and the other is 4,200gph. One of these pumps also drives a modest sized fountain that my wife wanted (but I didn't want the added disturbance on the water's surface, so this is a circular "addition" to the pond that I carved out before trimming my excess liner during installation). The water from this circular "mini pond" feeds back into the pond area via a short, narrow channel ... thusly, more freshly oxygenated water feeding into the pond from the side opposite of the waterfall.
Those 2 pumps, in addition to a pair of submersed 950gph pumps, feed a series of filtration systems, which includes putting my old solid pond liner (about 120 gal.) as the feed basin for my waterfall: it also serves part of the filtration process. The VAST majority of the money in this set-up is tied up in the pumps. The actual filters were relatively cheap, yet not always the prettiest. Keep' em hidden, who cares what they look like, right?
Filtration:
This is where we get rid of stuff: floating gunk, smells, sickly yet invisible chemicals, fish waste, etc. Most important here is the removal/conversion of ammonia and nitrites. Sounds like you have a UV filter! Good stuff for getting rid of pea soup water, and if you're not using a huge pump, you're probably zapping quite a few waterborne critters too. Some people make a big deal about a UV sterilizer and biological filtration being incompatible. If a pond is properly run and maintained I find that to be utter nonsense. I "over" stock my ponds and aquariums far too often and enjoy some wonderfully healthy fish. Granted, this spring's debacle might seem to be a testimony otherwise, but introducing a large group of already sickly fish is not going to be overcome by anything when there are no quarantine procedures in place (my bad). Point being: once established, a colony of bacteria are staying in the bio-filter media. I run my UV 24/7 and my ammonia levels remain at wonderfully insignificant levels. In fact, I have to use my brother's expensive testing kits to register numbers for ammonia (and usually nitrite) as the test strips show nothing! That's LOW ammonia.
Enough bragging about my good luck ...
OXYGEN! Get lots of it.
AMMONIA: Get rid of it!
I forget the actual numbers involved here, but each time you push the volume of your pond over a waterfall each hour (or more often) the "effective" volume of your pond is multiplied by some number ... and that's the number I am unable to recall. Sorry.
Of course, if you don't have good filtration, well aereated water isn't going to do much good.
I would like to add that filtration is great BUT.
Until you clean the filter you have not removed the waste from the system.
Now I hope most everybody knows this one and that I am preaching to the choir. Remember that the water your fish live in is constantly flowing through your filter. The filter should remove the "bad" stuff but the water is still exposed to the gunk inside the filter until the filter itself is cleaned. I used to work in a pet store, and it was amazing the looks of dawning comprehension I would get from well-meaning people who had never thought to clean the filter-it is supposed to keep things clean, why would it need cleaning?
I have a UV with bioballs and sponges. I like to rinse the sponges AT LEAST weekly in a bucket of pond water. This way, I can preserve the good bacteria and get rid of solids that get trapped in the foam. As long as I keep up with the sponges, the bioballs just stay in place, maybe get a little stir now and then. I also like to have lots of plants in the pond to use up the fish waste as fertilizer.
I admit that I keep nine small koi and one largish goldfish in about 700 gallons of water. Way too many fish in way too small a space. BUT I keep up with the filtration and aeration, use lots of plants, and I haven't lost a fish in three years (and that one jumped out).
Lots of good info coming through here, and I sure appreciate that! :O) Here is my setup: My pond is 2000 gal. My pump is 1260 GPH. I do have a waterfall. It is short though......only falls about a 12". The spillway is 16". I have a filter at the pump (in the pond)....and the UV light is in the line that runs to the waterfall. The waterfall is one of those "filter falls".....so that is a 2nd filter. I have 4 waterlilies and 8 marginal plants (in floating planters). I'm still working on getting my plant population up. I clean my filters about once a week....sometimes a bit more (rinse in pond water). I add a natural bacteria to my pond every 2 weeks.....and only use Algae Fix as needed (not often). I also started using a product called Muck Defense.....helps break down the muck, etc on the bottom of the pond so that the natural bacteria can work better. At this time I don't have a pond vac, but I net out what I can from the bottom of the pond. However, I just found a pond vac that I can afford, and plan on getting it soon. I have 3 large koi, 2 small koi, and a few baby goldfish (that need to come out as soon as I can catch them). Ok, critique me. LOL :o) Jenny
No critique needed, Jenny! The only "suggestion" would be this (and please understand that this is my obsessiveness "talkin" and not some grandiose notion of expertise): Consider removing the intake filter attached to your pump. Those things get clogged up so fast it's not funny, but you've probably discovered that already. I kept one on for the longest time believing it was protecting the smaller fish ... I now have some moderately hefty pumps (950, 4200, 5000gph) with nothing more than "leaf guards" over the intake and there are still plenty of baby fish to be found! Believe you me, I do NOT miss intake "filters" in any way, shape or form. :o)
For the number of fish you have, it sounds like you have a nice, comfy environment. Any pics? (of the pond, I mean ... ) 2,000 gallons should be a really nice environment for for that number of fish!!!
Yuo mentioned that your marginals are in floating pots. Do you have an area around the edge of the pond for plants/planters?
Lastly ... the Muck Defense is actually another bacteria addition. Fresh doses of fresh bacteria is a good thing. There are actually multiple varieties of those critters that are needed to maintain the health of our minituruized homebrew ecosystem.
SYLVI ... thanks for the addendum to my filtration rant! :o) Although, I do want to add that some things just don't get cleaned ... ever. The bio-balls in one of my filters are covered with a pad that gets rinsed (w/ pond water) whenever it needs it. The bio-balls, on the other hand, do not. By the way ... I am slowly replacing the bio-balls with squares of indistrial floor scrubber pads. I use the "Blue" type, they are the coarsest (with the exception of the black stripper pads, which I prefer not to use) avaliable and allow the bacteria to actually perform their job in its entirety.
Thanks BogweedBuck! I would like to think after 3 full seasons of ponding I might have this figured out. LOL Yes the intake filter does get pretty yucky, but I guess I don't mind cleaning it once a week. I know the second filter alone wouldn't be enough. Maybe in the future when it is more affordable, I'll check into an out of pond filter. :O) Good suggestion. Thank you.
My pond doesn't have any shelves or anything like that. It goes straight down about 3 feet. Finally this season I came across floating pond planters. Best thing I ever could have found for my particular setup. Rather than stacking blocks for marginal/bog plants, I can now just float them. It's worked really well for me!
I have totally given up on floating plants such as hyacinths and water lettuce. My koi just eat them right down to a little stump....till there's nothing left. Last season I bought 40 hyacinths, at a really good price.....but they didn't last but a couple weeks. And yes, I really do feed my koi. LOL
I really like the muck defense product. And it has helped alot. But I'd still like to get that pond vac before fall......before next spring for sure. Maybe Santa will bring it for me. LOL
I think I have a fairly current pond pic. Let me see.......well I just went out and snapped a few. :O) Jenny
The waterfall is in the corner under the tall grass. I'll send a closeup of it next. Jenny
Is that corn in the background?
Neat pond, btw! With an instant 3ft drop off, I suspect you don't have to worry much about freezing solid, eh?
Lastly, if your pond looks like nice, smells nice, and hosts active, vibrant and healthy fish after this long, the choice of filtration is evidently working juuuuuuuuuust fine for you!
And this is the waterfall. I used to have a taller waterfall, but with our wind I just lost too much water. So I switched to a shorter one. I like it much better.
And the lilies, which aren't blooming today, and a few of the floating planters. Jenny
Yes that is corn in the background. We farm....we grow corn and soybeans and raise pigs. No my pond doesn't freeze solid by any means. In fact, I let the waterfall continue to run most of the winter, and the whole back half of the pond doesn't even form ice on the top. Did you see the dragonfly on the horsetail rush in the last pic.....down on the bottom left corner of the pic. I didn't know he was there when I snapped the pic. Neat. ;o) Jenny
Great pond pictures Jenny, thanks for sharing them. Looks like your pond plants and the corn like it in Indiana!
Sheila