Saturday, March 29, 2014

Creating A Pond For Koi

By Roland Stockwell


Installing a koi pond is an amazing way to enhance the beauty of your property, whether it is a private home or commercial location. There is much to consider and plan prior to installing this special water feature, from the pond size to the number of fish, so consider the following suggestions prior to creating your pond.

Deciding how big of a pond you wish to have is a good way to begin. The size and shape of your pond affects many other factors, including the size of fish and amount of fish your pond can hold. Even small fish require many gallons of water in order to have enough oxygen, so it is important to have enough water for each fish and quite a bit extra to keep that water at safe oxygen levels. The larger the pond, the easier the water is to maintain, as smaller ponds are easily overcrowded and more affected by extremes in outside temperature. Creating too shallow of a pond is also not a great idea as it does not really allow your fish the freedom of movement they need to stay strong and healthy.

The filtration systems that you use are of the utmost importance. You should consider using a gravity-fed filtration system and one that is large enough to accommodate the size of your pond and the number of fish. Fish, particularly koi, produce quite a bit of solid waste, and you need to be sure to keep this waste from poisoning the water. Talk to a professional before you begin about everything from building materials to filtration to the number of fish and the size of fish you want. Research is key. After all you are dealing with live animals and their health is of the highest importance.

Once you have your pond up, running and filled with happy fish, you need to think about keeping them happy and safe in clean water. You might think the maintenance is constant, but there are products available that can make keeping the water clean fairly easy. For instance the AquaLily by Healthy Ponds and the AquaSpherePro are two simple-to-use products that also are chemical free.

AquaLily is not only a helpful item, it is also attractive. It is a lily pad-shaped dispenser that holds a specially formulated mix of beneficial bacteria. This bacteria goes to work as soon as it hits the water, keeping everything sparkling and clean. Each lily dispenser will work for a month, and then you just add a new bacteria package to the AquaLily. One lily dispenser will treat about 2,500 gallons of water.

Another easy option is the AquaSpherePRO. Unlike AquaLily, there is no dispenser, but the product works much the same way, using good bacteria to keep your water fresh. Each sphere lasts for 30 days and there are plenty of different sizes to accommodate any pond size. You can treat as little as 1,000 gallons up to truly enormous ponds with hundreds of thousands of gallons. Both products are veterinarian-approved and safe for fish, wildlife, pets and humans.




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