my Zen Water Garden and Koi Pond

[MMAX]

You know of any places to get some nice larger sized koi at a decent price?

[Dez]

My regime is slightly different than Kien's. I take the styrofoam out of the floating deicer heater and let it sink to the bottom. It only kicks on at 7c. Then I run an airstone on the first shelf 2 ft away from the heater which brings the warmer water up. I keep the air pump in the shed and cover in with a large Rubbermaid container and blanket so that the heat that the pump generates stays in the Rubbermaid and gets pumped to the pond. I do not run a water pump. When it gets really cold, I will shovel snow onto the frozen surface to help insulate the whole pond. This has worked well for the past 2 winters since I've had my big pond.

[Oilers]

Kien,
What type of filter media do you use? Can you show us a couple pictures of the filter system?

[kien]

Originally Posted by Oilers

Kien,
What type of filter media do you use? Can you show us a couple pictures of the filter system?

My filtration is fairly simple. It amounts to a giant canister filter built by Laguna called a Pressure Flo.



I have a pond pump that sucks up water and debris from the bottom of the pond and pushes it into the canister filter. The canister filter has foam pads for mechanical filtration. It also contains bioballs for biological filtration. It also has a UV sterilizer built in to nuke algae spores.

I also have bio balls in my water fall. In addition, this year I am installing an in-pond skimmer that skims the surface for debris like leaves and dead plants. I've managed to get by the past few years without a skimmer but having one will make your life a lot easier. I am constantly netting/scooping gunk like dead leaves off the bottom of the pond. This is fairly important because there is no clean up crew in the pond! Those dead leaves will just rot down there. A pond skimmer (either in-pond or out of pond) will go a long ways in helping to keep this debris from accumulating in your pond.

[Oilers]

Originally Posted by kien

I have a pond pump that sucks up water and debris from the bottom of the pond and pushes it into the canister filter. The canister filter has foam pads for mechanical filtration. It also contains bioballs for biological filtration. It also has a UV sterilizer built in to nuke algae spores.

I've read that ideally the pump should be able to pump half of the pond's volume every hour. Does that apply to all the pumps? What brand of pump would you recommend or use?

[kien]

Originally Posted by Oilers

I've read that ideally the pump should be able to pump half of the pond's volume every hour. Does that apply to all the pumps? What brand of pump would you recommend or use?

ya, that's a good rule of thumb. In the case of ponds and koi husbandry, definitely the more the better. Koi are messy fish! As an example, my canister filter (Pressure Flo) and its accompanying pump (Laguna max-flow) is rated for 3200 gallons per hour. My pond is roughly 1000g. The pump has worked flawlessly for 3 years now.



In the winter I take my canister filter off-line and store it, but I keep the pump on to circulate and move the water in the pond. The canister filter is not needed in the winter because the fish don't eat so they don't generate much waste and algae is dormant so there's not much to clean.

This is just one of many different methods of filtration. I also maintain a pond at my parents house and there they use an above ground box/water fall filter.



It works just as well. The key is, whatever you decide to use, make sure it's easy for you to maintain. My canister filter is nice because it has a backwash port which I can dial to when I need to flush out the filter pads. Then there are handy handles that I plunge on the filter that I can use to clean the pads of debris. The gunk gets washed out of the canister and into my garden/flow beds.

[Dez]

Awesome stuff Kien!

[Reef Pilot]

Beautiful!!

[FishyFishy!]

Dang you and your back yard of beauty!!




Jealous.

[michika]

Wow, that is just stunning. The photos are great.