my Zen Water Garden and Koi Pond

[kien]

Originally Posted by skabooya

Do you bring your koi in or have a heater outside or do you just leave them to fend for themselves? Everyone I talk to does something different so im interested

You are right, everyone seems to do it differently, and as have I over the years. I've had a koi pond for about 6 years now, 3 at my parents place and the past 3 years at my own place. When I had these fish at my parents place we would bring them in every year and house them in the basement in very large tubs. That was alright, except for the hassle and the space requirements. Unfortunately I don't have the space to house them inside so I went with the 'keeping them outside' approach for my own pond. The first year I built a hoop house over the pond to keep the snow and wind off of it. This worked out well and the pond rarely froze over. Even when it did freeze there was just a very thin layer of ice, but once the sun came out it got pretty hot in the hoop house. (hoop house was just flexible PVC piping with clear plastic draped over it.)

The hoop house was a bit of a pain to set up and take down every year so the second and third year I skipped the hoop house and just ran more powerful pumps to keep the water flowing enough to prevent the entire pond from freezing solid. This worked out well too. The pond did freeze over more than it did when it had the hoop house though. Probably a couple of inches of ice on top, while the rest remained unfrozen with the help of the water movement. The key here is to buy a deicer which is a device that floats on top and keeps a 6 inch hole in the ice at all times to allow gas to escape.

If you keep the fish outside the important thing is not to feed them once the water temperature drops below 15 degrees and don't feed them again until it is at least 15 degrees for a few days straight. Typically they won't eat in these temperatures anyway as their metabolism drops to nothing and they go into a state of hibernation.

For safety reasons (I have young kids), my pond is only 2 feet deep at its deepest so it surely would freeze solid if it were not for the waterflow. I have a couple of levels, a 1 foot deep shelf and and then another foot to the bottom. If my son falls in (which he has, LOL), he can stand up just fine. Anyway, I keep the pumps (kinda like pond powerheads), at the 1 foot ledge and try not to disturb the bottom of the pond where the fish hibernate. My parents still have the pond that I built there but their fish come to hibernate in my pond over the winter, and they just drain their pond. When my kids are older I will probably dig it out and dig it out another foot or two.

I will admit, it is kind of scary thinking of the fish outside when it is minus 30 below but they're fine. I have not lost any of my larger fish this way. I have lost a few smaller comets but none of my koi.