Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Cleaning the Koi and Goldfish Outdoor Pool
Koi Pond Regular Weekly MaintenancePhoenixKoiRescue.com
Shorty@ShortyPen.com
Water Changes
The MOST IMPORTANT thing you should do with your pond, is to remove at least 15% of the water in the pond EVERY WEEK, and replace it with new fresh water. Doing this solves many problems, and dramatically increases your water quality, and let your koi's immune system keep them healthy. Real koi kichi (koi nuts) change 15% of the water every day. Evaporation is a big issue here in Arizona. As water evaporates, it leaves behind minerals in the water, so if you only "top off" the water, what happens is the minerals build up and screw up the water quality. Keep in mind that koi came from rivers, which are continually supplied with fresh rain water.
The biggest reason that people don't do regular water changes, is that it can be a pain to do. Also very dangerous, if you forget and leave the hose running & change too much water, you will shock your fish and kill them. I have koi in tanks, for for me it is as simple as installing a drain valve in the side of the tank at the 15% level. So I open the valve, the water drains down to that point and I come back later to close the valve, and fill it back up.
Most people have ponds in the ground, so a gravity drain is not a solution for them. Another technique I have found that is very effective, is to setup a special pump that is used for your regular water changes. The automatic shut off pump hangs over the edge of the pond, and is suspended so the pump's intake is down at the 15% level. Then you use a crank timer switch (like used in steam rooms, or public bathrooms) to run the pump for the appropriate time. If the pump stays on for some reason, it can only drain down to the 15% level, and will not pump your pond dry. Every pond is different, so you need to figure a solution that works best for you.
Filling Your Pond - use a sprinkler
Tap water has clorine in it, and koi naturally investigate waterfalls (and streams of water) so if you fill your pond with a hose, the koi will swim right up to the hose and start breathing water that has a concentration of chlorine in it. This may burn their gills and cause damage. One solution is to spray the water with a sprinkler head. This spreads the new tap water over a larger area to quickly dilute it, plus the aeration helps to evaproate the chlorine from the water.
Filling Your Pond - Use a water timer
One really good solution is to use an yard irrigation type water controller like used to water your lawn. The average size backyard koi pond is 5000 gallons, and 15% of that is 750 gallons, which takes about an hour to fill from a garden hose. So you can see how easy it would be to turn on the hose and accidentally forget about it. If you talk to others at your koi club, you will find that many people have accidentally left the hose running (sometimes overnight or all day) and killed all of their collection by accident.
PH and Baking Soda / Oyster Shell (chicken grit)
An ideal PH for koi ponds is around 7.2 to 8.2. Ponds built from concrete and with a large amount of rocks in the system tend to keep their PH balanced just fine. Ponds which have a plastic liner and all plastic parts tend to have problems keeping their PH at an acceptable level. If your pond PH drops below 7.6, then you should add baking soda to increase the PH. Add 1 cup per thousand gallons, per day until the PH is back up to the proper level. A better, longer lasting solution is to add some crushed oyster shell which will slowly dissolve and buffer your water, so it will keep a stable PH. Crushed oyster shell is commonly sold as "chicken grit" at local feed stores, about $10 for 50 lbs. Just put some chicken grit in a net bag, and put it in your pond near water that is flowing.
Filter Flushing & Cleaning
You should flush your filter at least once per week. The good bacteria in filters aerobic, and the newer colonies perform the nitrate conversion process at a much faster rate than old colonies of bacteria, so by flushing the filter you get rid of the anaerobic muck, and also sluff off the old colonies of bacteria, so new ones can form. I have a home made barrel filter that I installed a knife valve in, so for me it is as simple as turn off the pump, open the valve and stir with a stick. Whatever filter you have, configure it so that it is easy to do, so you will do it more often.
Full pond clean out -
Good filter designs collect water and debris from the bottom of the pond so you never build up a muck layer. However many ponds I have seen in people's back yards are not configured that way, and they have layers of muck, leaves and debris. That muck layer builds up over time, and then occasionally owners do a big "clean out". This is very dangerous and can kill all of your fish in just a few minutes. What is happening is that that muck layer creates an anaerobic environment which harbors toxic bacteria and substances. If you disturb this area while the fish are in the pond, it will release those toxins in the water and kill the fish. So if you want to perform a big "clean out", you should remove all the fish to a temporary holding tank (like an intex swimming pool) and then perform your clean. After the clean out, get the pond running again for at least 3 days, and then you can start to replace your fish a few at a time.
My pond water is clear, doesn't that mean it is healty water?
No. Clarity has nothing to do with the quality of the water. Ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate are all toxic to koi. You can have perfectly clear water, and kill your fish, or significantly stunt their growth. To see what levels you have, you need to test your water with test kits.
Feeding
Koi can be pigs and consume mass amounts of food, and on the other hand they can survive on small amounts of food. The more you feed, the bigger they will grow, but keep in mind that you need a filter that is big enough to handle the amount of food you feed. Koi can survive and be healthy on as little as 0.5% feed rate, per day. On the other hand, owners looking to get maximum growth are known to feed up to 3% feed rate per day. If you feed less than 0.5%, then the koi start to become stressed, and start having health issues.
The way to calculate your feed rate (the amount of food you feed), simply calculating the body weight of the koi you have, and figuring the dry weight of the food you feed. So if you have 29 lbs of koi (464 ounces of koi), then a 1% feed rate is 4.64 ounces.
You should split the food and do multiple feeds per day. Koi are grazing fish, and their system works better getting a little bit of food at a time. A common feeding schedule is to give them some food first thing in the morning when you wake up, then some right after you get home from work, and the rest right before you goto bed. If you can split it into 5 feedings per day, they can process the food much better.
NOTE: If you find uneaten food in your pond, then something is wrong. Either you are feeding too much, or you have water quality problems, or your filter isn't big enough, or something else. Also see below about the temperature to stop feeding.
How To Calculate The Weight Of Your Fish The simplest method I have found is to make estimations based on the length of the fish. What you do is place something in your pond that you know the length of, such as a decoration or even just a stick. As the fish swim past the item, you can see how long they are compared to that item. You can even take photos as they go past, so you can look at the pictures to help with the comparisons. You then make a list of all the fish you have, and how long they are. Now that you have their lengths, you can use the following average lengths to figure how much they weigh. This may seem complicated or laboursome, but you really only need to do it once or twice a year.
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Typical Weight of Standard Fin Koi, Per Their Length (including tail fin) 4" 0.62 oz
5" 1.21 oz
6" 2.09 oz
7" 3.33 oz
8" 4.96 oz
9" 7.07 oz
10" 9 oz
11" 12 oz
12" 16 oz13" 20 oz
14" 26 oz
15" 30 oz
16" 40 oz
17" 45 oz
18" 56 oz
19" 66 oz
20" 77 oz
21" 82 oz22" 102 oz
23" 120 oz
24" 134 oz
25" 150 oz
26" 160 oz
27" 180 oz
28" 210 oz
29" 230 oz
30" 150 oz
How To Calculate The Dry Weight Of Your Food
First you need to figure what container and scoop works best for you. I personally use a peanut butter jar and it's lid as the measuring cup, however many people use a big plastic jar and a real kitchen type measuring scoop. Whatever measuring scoop you use, put 10 scoops of food into a container and measure it with a postal scale. Then take that weight and divide by 10, and you have a pretty accurate weight of one scoop your food. Write that on the scoop, so you know how many scoops your fish need. For an example, I found that my peanut butter jar lid holds 1.75 oz of my pellet food.
Homemade Koi Food
I have seen a number of large healthy koi that were fed regular koi pellets PLUS large amounts of table scraps. I have become convinced that feeding your koi fresh foods is essential, because processed & dried foods seem to destroy the nutritional value of the ingredients. There are lots of recipies on the internet of how to make your own koi food.
For the food I make, I take koi pellets and run them thru my blender dry, this makes a powder. I set that aside, then blend up a bunch of vegetables to make what looks like a milkshake. I then mix that by hand with the powder, plus wheat germ, wheat flour, corn meal, and other random stuff to thicken it up. I split that up into portions that are the right size for 1 week of feeding. Then I move one portion to the refrigerator, and pull off chunks daily to feed to my koi. Not very scientific, but my fish like it. Also I feed cooked shrimp, and cooked tilapia.
Winter Break - No Feeding
A koi's metabolism is mostly based on the temperature. At temperatures between 60 and 87, you should feed the full daily amount. At temps between 56 and 60, you should cut the feed rate down to 0.75% or less. After the water temp drops to 52 and below (and stays down there), you should stop feeding until the temp rises back above 52 and stays there or above. The koi go into a slow state and mostly sit on the bottom of the pond during this cold time, and they don't process the food very well. This is a normal part of their yearly cycle, they build up a lot of fat in the fall to carry them through the winter. Your filter will mostly die off also, so in the spring when you start to feed again, feed lightly for a while to build the bacteria up again.
Hot temperatures -- reduce feeding
One of the problems we have in Arizona is the water temperature can rise very high, I have seen temps as high as 96 in my tanks. One summer, the water stayed at 96 for about a month and a half. The koi reduce the amount they eat when the temp gets above 88, so if you notice this, then cut back on the amount you feed.
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