Our winter home came with a wonderful (award-winning) pond; its ten resident koi are now 10-12 years old. We keep a detached relationship with them: happy to have and feed them but wouldn't have chosen to go that route as far as a water-feature is concerned. We've learned...and mostly forgotten....the names given to their various color patterning and featherings. If this thread has legs (fins?), we'd be happy to delve into that aspect of koi ownership. I have not determined, however, what the optimal population is for our particular pond. It's not been a problem in the past: the koi we inherited have continued in good health and have grown over the period of out tenure. The original owner told us that there were fertile females, but that any spawn were consumed by these cannibalistic monsters so we shouldn't expect any fry. And that's how it's been, until this year. When we came down from Alaska this autumn, we discovered some littl'uns. Now that the lily pads are mostly gone for the winter, we have counted a certain ten and probably eleven youngsters, and there may be more. They're now up to three+ inches long, and some fine patterning is beginning to develop. If anyone either is knowledgeable about koi and would like to inherit some at no cost, or is just getting into this interest and would like some starter fish, please contact us. Obviously, the closer the better - but in all cases it's you-haul. Again, this is not, of course, Alaska, but in the Greater Phoenix AZ area.
We have a 300 gallon feed trough containing too many Koi for their sizes now + 2 albino and 2 black channel catfish. The water runs up through trays in a greenhouse for veggies and herbs and to keep the water clean. Works pretty well. Too many fish / not a big enough pond. We did get some small fish in a 100 gallon tub I was trying to grow water chestnuts in and have no idea where they came from. Some of the Koi are really pretty, a few butterflies and some interesting colors & I got them trained to suck on my fingertips/knuckles last summer :smile:
300 gallons does not sound like much! Our pond is chest-deep, about 25' x 20', and with a sophisticated UV + Bioballs + aerator + waterfall + other filters system. I think I figured it at about 7,000 gallons, but don't hold me to that. Here's what the pond and most of the adults look like in April, after the water lilies begin to regenerate. By high summer, their surface coverage suffices to keep the water cool enough for the koi to survive this ridiculous climate:
