We’re not saying you shouldn’t plant these; just consider their placement carefully.

More — by family
(drawn from the Thompson & Morgan Seed Catalog)

Rock-Lined Ponds

•   Equipment needed: good sump pump with hose, nets to catch and cover fish, fish-holding facility, pressure sprayer (optional), buckets, rubber gloves and boots, de-chlor, aeration.
•  Procedure: remove fish (use pond water and air stone), empty pond, hose/ agitate rocks shallow to deep (thoroughly!), re-fill, de-chlor, replace fish (this is a good time to inspect your fish!)

  Filter Preparation

•   If you’ve been running one all winter, it should be OK other than routine maintenance.
•   Most filters are shut down. These need to be thoroughly cleaned prior to start-up. Avoid any contamination to pond from these filters while cleaning. Start filter as soon as possible.

  Feeding

•   Do not feed until water is consistently above 50 degrees
•   First meal should be liquid- fat — low protein (Kenzen). Soft food is best (soak in water) because their gut is very vulnerable to injury now.
•   As soon as fish are eating and water is around 55 or warmer, feed grapefruit section twice per week for immune system.
• Feed Sho-koi or similar immune stimulating food.
• At 60 degrees, normal food is OK. Once per day until it hits 65 degrees.
  Watch ammonia and nitrite build-up carefully. Filter will take awhile to catch up.

  Fish Health

•  You WILL have fish health problems in the Spring; no immunity + active pathogens = trouble in River City.
•  Minimized by proper fall preparation and covering of pond.
•  Don’t even consider treating for anything until pond is pristine clean.
• Begin now by salting to .3%, or 3 lbs/100 gal in 3 increments. Leave in for 2 weeks, then gradually lower with water changes. (remove sensitive plants) This will eradicate most parasites, its cheap, safe, and doesn’t harm the filter.
  • Sales pitch: Potassium Permanganate (KMNO4), available from most hardware stores.
  • Has the most extensive ‘kill’ list of any treatment available
    • Is safe if used properly
    • Cautions:
      • Do not use below 60 degrees. It degrades cuticle layer (slime), which will not be replaced at low temps.
      • You MUST know your pond volume before using.
      • Do not allow contact with eyes.
      • Kills ALL bacteria, including beneficial, so be sure to bypass filter.
    •  Benefits:
      • Cleans up organic debris.
      • Kills bacteria, fungi, and parasites
      • Is easily neutralized with hydrogen peroxide.
      • Organisms cannot develop ‘resistant’ strains to this stuff.
      • It’s cheap, cheap, cheap

Potassium Permangante Regimen

1. Establish your total pond volume. (Don’t even think about using unless you know this!)
2. Shut down or by-pass filters; remove plants.
3. Add plenty of aeration.
4. Dose initially with 1 level teaspoon per 1200 US gallons. Dissolve in water and disperse over surface of pond. This will give you a 2 ppm concentration.
5. Check the water color. It will be purple at first, but will quickly turn to pink. Using a white container, check color periodically. When it changes from light pink/champagne color to more of a tea color, go to step 6 (this should take from one to two hours).
6. Dose with 1/4 teaspoon per 1200 gallons same as in (4) above. Check color periodically. It should change to tea color after another hour or so.
7. All subsequent doses will be .5 ppm, or 1/4 teaspoon per 1200 gallons. These doses should be given each time the color changes from champagne to tea color. This will be roughly once per hour. (note: if the color is changing to tea or brown very quickly, you have too much organic debris in your pond. Discontinue treatment until your pond has been properly cleaned!).
8. The total time for the treatment is 10 hours unless fish become obviously stressed (i.e. gasping for air, rolling over, etc.), in which case go straight to the next step.
9. Neutralize with 1 qt. hydrogen peroxide per 4000 gallons. This will turn the pond clear within seconds. Turn your filter back on and replace all plants.
10. Repeat the entire procedure after five days.

Reprinted with permission from Water Gardening Magazine

I know that I’m dating myself here, but when I was back in the first grade, our teacher taught us the basics of reading using a series of primers that told the simple saga of Dick, Jane and a dog named Spot. Many years later when I was taking education courses I learned that the purpose of every primer is to introduce young learners to the Dolch 220 basic sight words. It is essential that these words be learned by rote, not only because they make up a sizable percentage of all print matter, but because they serve as the building blocks that enable us to decipher the rest of the printed word.

The same can be said about the language of koi, namely that it is essential to learn some basic vocabulary words and concepts before moving on to more advanced terminology.

The lingua franca of koi is Japanese in origin, and although that in itself would seem to be intimidating, it really doesn’t have to be. Luckily, the phonetics of Japanese is relatively simple and repeatable. If you ever studied Spanish in school, you know that the each of the vowels has only one pronunciation. Therefore, with a few minutes of practice, anyone can do a passable job of reading Spanish aloud in an understandable manner. You may not understand anything you’re saying, but the point is that it sounds pretty much like Spanish.

Japanese is very much this way as well, so with a little work on your part, you too can sound like a koi veteran in no time. If you decide to get serious about learning these terms, make yourself some flash cards with the words you’re trying to learn on one side and definitions on the other. It works for me.

Pronunciation Guide

In Japanese, our letter “i” is pronounced “ee”
In Japanese, our letter “a” is pronounced “ah”
In Japanese, our letter “e” is pronounced “eh” as in Ed
In Japanese, our letter “u” is pronounced “oo” as in cool or book
In Japanese, our letter “o” is pronounced “oh”

General Fish Terms

It is important to be able to count to five in Japanese when learning to talk the talk of koi. An amazing number of terms utilize these five words so it will be useful to commit them to memory.

Ichi (ee-chee) – One. A breeder often refers to his best fish as “ichiban,” which means number one.

Ni (nee) – Two. A two year old koi is called a nisai (nee-sigh). A one year old, by the way, is called
a tosai (toe-sigh). I don’t know why it isn’t an ichisai.

San (sahn) – Three. Yep, a sansai is a three year old fish.

Yon (yohn) – Four. Yes, yonsai refers to a four year old.

Go (go) – Five. You can figure this one out all by yourself.

Colors

When you consider that wild Japanese carp were either dark brown or deep blue, the multi-colored varieties of koifish that we all enjoy today represent a miracle of genetic mutation and remarkable breeding skills.

Shiro (sheer – oh) – This is the Japanese word for white, and because it acts as the canvas for so many varieties of koi, it is impossible to overstate its importance. When you buy koi that
has shiroji (white ground), the quality of the white sets the standard for all the other
colors, especially reds and blacks. The very best koi have a quality comparable to
to the color of milk.

Hi (hee) – This is a general term for red and probably the most commonly used.

Aka (ah – kah) – Another general term for red.

Beni (beh – knee) – This is a term that not only denotes red, but infers good quality. Toshio Sakai, a great modern breeder, tells students of koi that to identify good beni, one should look at the
red of a fish in the same way you’d look at a paint job on a custom car. The more
coats of paint, the more depth. More depth equates to better beni.

Sumi (soo – mee) – This is the Japanese word for ink. Keep in mind that for thousands of years the people of Asia have ground their own ink and mixed it with water for the purpose of writing
or creating sumi-e (ink paintings). When you buy fish with sumi, you want the black
to have great depth and gloss similar to that of a pool of ink. When combined with
another word, e.g. katazumi, the initial consonant “s” often changes to a “z.”

Ki (kee) – Yellow, as in kigoi.

Midori (mee – dohr – ee) – Green.

Ai (aye) – Indigo blue. This is a blue that is exceptionally dark. There is one type of sumi, for example, that is referred to as ai-zumi because it has a bluish quality to it.

Sora (soh – ruh) – Sky. A soragoi is a koi with a bluish gray color.

Body Parts

As you read various books and magazines about koi, you’ll encounter terms that describe varying aspects of a fish’s body parts.

Kuchi (koo – chee)- Lips. The term kuchibeni, for example, refers to a fish with red lips or “lipstick.”

Te (the) – In Japanese, this word means hand, as in karate. On a koi it refers to the fish’s pectoral fins, which are used in a hand-like manner for fine maneuvering.

Hana (hah – nah) – Nose. Hanabeni or hanazumi describes a red or black marking, often dot shaped, found on the tip of a koi’s nose.

Men (men) – Face. When we eventually get to an article about the showa variety of koi, we’ll spend more time discussing this feature of a koi’s anatomy.

Kata (kah – tah)Shoulder. When buying koi of the sanke variety, it’s important to look for katazumi, which is a black marking on the shoulder of the fish. The shoulder is the area directly behind the head and above the pectorals (te).

Ozutsu (oh – zoot -sue) Tail tube. As you look at a mature koi from front to rear you’ll notice that the fish is widest at the shoulder. As you move your eye towards the rear, the fish tapers down and narrows until it reaches the tail fin itself. In good quality fish it is important that the last few inches of the fish’s body, the ozutsu, be thick and well developed because it reflects strength and power.

Our next three articles will deal with kohaku, showa and sanke. In Japan this group of koi is referred to as gosanke, which means “big three.” Between now and then, I hope that you study your new vocabulary terms so that we can continue to build on them and become ever more fluent in the language of koi.

©2004 all rights reserved to Bob Brudd and Water Gardening Magazine

Oh my. Oh dear.

Either the Pond Fairy has struck again in the depths of the night, or you’ve just paid your local landscaper a wad o’ cash to combine the fatal, ineffable trio of water, plants and fish in your very own back yard. You need to know one incredibly important fact. It is central to the entire hobby of water gardening.

THERE IS NO CURE.

Once you have settled down at dusk by the side of your new pond with a glass of fine wine in one hand and a great trashy novel in the other, you become aware of a feeling you were not expecting. No, it isn’t inner peace and serenity. You need a Buddhist monastery for that, and you look lousy in saffron anyway. It’s not pride and satisfaction, either. That lasted just about until you had to pull out and rinse off that mucky filter pad on your submersible pump, and discovered one of those expensive fish the landscaper sold you dead in the skimmer looking like a live grenade. No, what you are feeling is the common malaise and unrest that all ponders feel once their current water feature is installed, paid for and running. It is the eerie and ominous, all-pervasive psychic effect of the Three Laws to which you are now, like all other water gardeners, frog fanciers and koi keepers, immutably subject. You find yourself looking at that prize rose bed and reflecting that it’s getting really tough to keep up with those darn Japanese beetles every year. The lawn is just too much trouble to keep groomed. Those annual beds are just so …tacky, somehow. Wouldn’t a perennial bed be easier? Maybe a more natural setting, with bombproof aquatics and blooming marginals? You find yourself looking at every home you visit and saying to yourself : ” I’d put the pond…there!”. Well, bucko, once The Laws have you, there is no escape, so you might as well know what you are dealing with.

The First Law:

There Is Always A Better Fish.

Yes, I know your original intent was to build a lovely, low-maintenance water feature with a minimum of critters to worry about, but that baby koi at the fish show was so cute and he really isn’t all that big. Surely the filter mat and lava rock will be able to handle the load. Oh! Look at that 2 year old fish on this website…we need something to eat all those mosquito larvae, anyway.

And so it goes. Pond people are natural enthusiasts and incurable optimists. The pond just isn’t right somehow without something to come wriggling up to the surface when you shake the can of fish food. It’s real easy to get overpopulated. And fish grow. Fast. Real fast. Which leads us naturally to…

The Second Law:

There Is Always A Better Filter.

Shortly after buying your umpteenth fish and introducing him into the pond, you realize that the population does not look happy. They are sulky and lethargic. They are not eating and they look unhappy. If you are smart and thinking ahead, you have already bought a good test kit for ammonia and nitrite, and have just found that your pond scores high on both. That lava rock at the top of the falls just isn’t doing it, folks, so it’s time to do your research. There is an answer for every filtration problem, even if you didn’t know that the question even existed. It is important to understand that there are three kinds of filters (chemical, mechanical and biological) and each has its place in The Great Swamp of Ponding.

Chemical filters (charcoal, zeolite and the like) remove chemical impurities and pollutants from the water by binding them to their own chemical structure. They are usually used in short-term or emergency situations, such as sales or show vats, but have no place in the outdoor pond. Most water gardens and koi ponds combine mechanical and bio-conversion filtration in one or more containers of varied design. Pond filtration is one of the most rapidly developing and hotly debated aspects of the hobby. Gravity-fed vs. pressurized. To UV or not to UV. Lava rock or Siporax ( or Tuffy sponges?). The choices are endless, and what may have worked for Cousin Earl in his 25,000 gallon indoor showplace will be a gurgling disaster in your 550 gallon stream and pool.

The solution is to ask questions, and never entirely believe any of the answers until you have seen them work. Find other hobbyists (look for gardening clubs, hobbyist websites like this one (gasp!), koi clubs) and pick their brains. Don’t be shy. Any experienced water gardener and koi fancier has been where you are right now, has done the fix, bought the t-shirt, and then used it to plug the leak in the hose that was supposed to be leakproof. Describe what you’ve got in a gathering of pond people, and you’ll hit 14 “bore-buttons” simultaneously. Ponders love to talk, especially about their disasters and how they fixed them. Your solution is Out There.

A caveat, if you will, before going on. Never believe a filter manufacturer when he tells you what the “capacity” of his filter is. For the safety of your critters (which become family members very quickly), cut the claims by half, and install accordingly. Your goal in filtration is to expose every molecule of water in your pond to your bio-converter at least once an hour. Make sure your pump is up to the strain and your filter and piping can handle the flow.

Oh, too much splash? Fish growing fast? No room for that lily or lotus? Ah, Grasshopper, you have just run afoul of …

The Third Law:

There Is Never Enough Water.

Almost every water gardener starts small, thinking that small size means low maintenance. This is not entirely true. A pond that is shallow will be more susceptible to wide shifts in temperature and pH, and is more subject to catastrophic reactions to pollutants and other toxic events, especially with high fish populations. Ask any ponder; almost without exception, he or she will tell you that the showplace you are viewing in her idyllic back yard is actually the fifth pond on that site (if you count the two water lilies in the muck bucket!), and if they had really been thinking during construction, they would have dug down another foot, at least.

A true pond owner is eternally greedy for gallonage. Big volumes give you stability and room for fish and plants, and if designed right, also can be made routinely almost (note the word “almost”, it’s a killer!) self-maintaining. Ponds are very much like model railroad layouts. There is generally at least one glitch needing repair, and there is always one more improvement that will make it just perfect. If a boat is a hole in the water that you pour money into, you can achieve the same sense of accomplishment with a pond, which is a hole in your yard full of water that you pour money into. Your chances of drowning with a pond are marginally smaller, and you don’t have to travel to do it! A true ponder will tell you that if you are still mowing grass, you do not have enough pond.

Never be afraid to look at your current water garden and envision change. It is what this hobby is all about. See you at the next koi show!

DrBob

The Inherited Pond
-or-“Darling, what’s that hole in the back yard?”

It happens. A lot. You gotta move. New job, new kid, new career, new town. You find it, the perfect house, great construction, man-cave, kitchen full of new appliances, close to transport, roomy garage and a big back yard with a-ulp-pond. With fish. Realtor says “Ain’t it great? So soothing!”
Only one problem. Your total prior ponding experience involved falling into one at age seven while visiting Old Uncle Joe on his farm. Your remaining memories of that experience, including as they did the Attack of the Million Enraged Feral Chickens, fifteen pounds of mixed mud and blanket weed and an unfortunately-placed cow pie are mercifully dim. Suddenly you are the person in charge of a whole new ecology, with lives on the line.  The movers have been and gone. You live here. Now what?
Given the popularity of this hobby, it’s not surprising to find a pond in the back yard of every other house you look at while hunting. What you will do with what will either be an absorbing avocation or a monumental headache needs to be part of the process of deciding before you put your money down.
Think. Do I want a new hobby? Given the complexity of successful water gardening (at the easy end) and koi keeping (at the hard end), are you willing to commit the time and money involved? As pretty as that water feature looks, there’s probably a considerable bunch of infrastructure hidden away somewhere on the property. The prettier the pond, the more complex the works. This hobby tends to eat all your other hobbies.
Do I have the resources to support this hobby? Water gardening is not cheap. It’s been said (by boaters) that a boat is a hole in the water that you throw money into. A pond is a hole in the back yard that you throw water and money into, and you probably have to pay for the water. The only advantage that ponding has over boating is that your risk of drowning is slightly lower. Electricity for the pumps and filters. Supplies for water testing. Fish. Food. Plants. Landscaping and re-digging when you find that the pond is just too small. New pumps. New filters. New pipe. Lights. Remember that the closest hobby to ponding in addiction and character is model railroading. Like a model railroad layout, a pond is never, ever actually finished.
Sounds awful, doesn’t it. It is not. This is one of the most absorbing and rewarding activities around, if you let yourself get involved, and your fellow enthusiasts are some of the nicest and most helpful folks you’ll find anywhere. This hobby will stretch your mind and you will never be bored.
So. Set the scene. You want this property. Pond and all. What do you need?

1.    You need some assurance that the pond is in current working order and has not been abandoned since the previous owners left town mysteriously three years ago closely followed by the FBI, NCIS, LSMFT and KGB. If what you see is a stagnant puddle that smells bad, a bulldozer may be your best option. If the pond is in operation and it smells like fresh cantaloupe (assuming that you are house-shopping in the summer), go to step 2. If it is deep winter, and all you can see is seven feet of snow, go to step 2, but with caution.
2.    Talk to the owners. It is still their pond and, most likely, they did most of the design and upkeep work. They know where all the tools, switches, valves and pipes are. They know what leaks and when and where the most common failure points are and what to do about them when they fail. Ask if they are members of a koi club or water gardening society. If they are, join before you move. Go to meetings and ask questions.
3.    Get an operating manual. If the previous owners have not written one, make it a condition of the sale.
4.    Before you move, and before the previous owners split for parts unknown, have them run through the daily, weekly and/or monthly maintenance rituals. Take notes and pictures. Record the conversation. Ask them about visitors to the pond. Not just the neighbors. Ask about the wildlife. Depending on where this pond is, you could be dealing with anything from raccoons to herons to mink to alligators. Or drunks.
5.    Inspect the infrastructure for age, condition and accessibility. Change is the ground state in ponding, but you need to know where you are starting from. A run-through by a competent electrician is a good idea too.
6.    If there are fish, look at them. Are they healthy, active critters or do they look damaged or sick? Are there too many of them in the pond? Does the water look clean? How does it smell?
7.    If you have a friend who is familiar with the hobby, make sure he or she looks at the pond with you. If you have hunted down a koi club before you moved, get one of the members to look things over. Many clubs have at least one or two members who have trained as Koi Health Advisors and can give you advice that is based on fact rather than opinion or hearsay.
8.    Read, read, read. This website has articles and FAQs that cover practically every aspect of the hobby. There are loads of other resources available on the Internet. Do not go into this hobby blind.
9.    No pond is perfect. There were probably design and construction errors made during building and peculiarities that have crept into the system over time. A clean, compact layout is the mark of a professional builder that has not been played with. A chaotically tangled mess of valves, pipes, tanks and motors is the sign of a pond that has been modified multiple times and has-adapted. Both systems probably work. Guess which one needs a Ouija board to operate?

It sounds complex, but if you are prepared for it you’ll never regret getting involved in this fascinating ecological exercise. It is addicting, absorbing and, at the end of a stinky, hot day at work, it is the best thing ever to sit by the pond, reveling in the knowledge that your huntin’, shootin’ and campin’ buddies have to travel 600 miles to find a spot by a body of water with no sanitation which they must share with the bears, cooties and blackflies. You have the falls, the stream and the fish right there. Need a beer? The fridge is just a few steps away. With Wi-Fi!

The Inherited Pond-Part Two

-or- “Wait, what? I didn’t know that was back here!”

Aaaaaand this is the second and way more common scenario. Great house, fantastic yard and nobody mentioned the pond. If they did, it was called a “low maintenance attractive water feature” in the realtor’s blurb. You move into the property in the middle of the worst winter since the IceMonster attack of ’08 and the icecap has receded enough to reveal…THE BLACK LAGOON! It might be inhabited…

The previous owners are long gone leaving no forwarding address and the realtor has either sold out or burned down. Now what?

The decision tree is pretty simple at this point. Do you want to be a ponder or not? Either way, you’ll need to know what’s in there and what’s available from a support standpoint. Are there resident livestock? Is there a pumping facility or perhaps filters hidden somewhere? Are there tools, nets, pumps or pipes? It’s time to look around.

Start with the pond itself. First off, how big is it? I had the privilege of talking to a new ponder this past weekend who had just moved into a rural property in the southern exurbs to find that he was now the proud owner of two 30,000 gallon ponds and several hundred koi (and God knows what else). His learning curve is gonna be really steep, but with those volumes, he’ll have time to get a grip on the problem. Ponds that size mostly run themselves. Most of what we run into is considerably smaller.

Now look around the pond perimeter. What is there in the way of infrastructure? Is this just a hole in the ground, or is there a waterfall and a skimmer? Can you identify pipe runs, and if you can, where do they go and what is on the other end? Is there a shed or a storage structure nearby? What treasure lies within? Maybe filters? Maybe an operating manual? Be careful. There might be a Grue.

Next, how does it smell? If what you get is a distinct aroma of rotten egg, you can be reasonably certain that there will be nothing living beneath the surface. The presence of hydrogen sulfide implies anaerobic breakdown of organic materials, and the dissolved gas is toxic to just about anything except bacteria from the abyssal trench. Water that has no bad odors suggests hope, regardless of how it looks.

In either case, you do not start by poking around with sticks or nets. At best, you’ll frighten or stress any inhabitants that have been lying low all winter. At worst, you’ll stir up whatever muck is lying on the bottom, deposited by winter storms, wind and whatever. Stirring it up releases whatever has been developing in the sludge, and it’ll be toxic. You need to drain that pond.

You’ll need a high-capacity submersible pump for the job, and a Home Despot-equivalent sump pump is a good choice. If you think that the pond harbors live denizens, you’ll need a net and someplace to put them, at least temporarily. A 100-250 gallon Rubbermaid horse trough from Farm ‘n Fleet works well here, especially if you are planning to continue in the hobby. It’ll end up as your isolation tank. Pump out and discard the water, you’ll be replacing it anyway. Or not.

As the water drains, living denizens, if any, will become visible and can be transferred to your holding facility. Anything left on the bottom of a mechanical nature (pumps, pipes, or if you are really lucky, a bottom drain) will begin to give you an idea of how the pond worked and how well it was designed. If you are having the usual Ponder’s Luck (a corollary of Murphy’s Law) what you’ll get is sludge and if you are REALLY unlucky (Murphy was an optimist), the bottom will be covered in gravel, and maybe Jimmy Hoffa. The fact that there was water in the hole suggests that the liner, whatever it is made of, was intact, at least to the top of the water level. Do your best not to damage it.

STOP. Decision time. DO YOU WANT TO BE A PONDER? Are you willing to subjugate yourself to the tyranny of the THREE LAWS of PONDING? If not, install the sump pump in your basement, use the horse trough as a patio water garden and call a landscaper in to remove the liner and fill in the hole. Plant flowers and veggies. Be happy. If you decide that the pond is your future, clean out the bottom, get rid of the mucky gravel, refill, dechlorinate, hook up whatever infrastructure you can find, transfer the livestock, if any, back to the pond and start studyin’ up. The rest of this website is a great place to start. The learning curve can be steep, but it’s worth it.

Oh, the THREE LAWS?

• There is always a better fish.
• There is always a better filter.
• There is NEVER enough water.

Beware.

Bob Passovoy
May, 2016