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Fish
Tips on Care
We are novice koi enthusiasts and none of our fish are show quality. We've been blessed with good luck so far with the care we practice so we will keep it up! Here's a list of things we do:
- Avoid
sharp objects in the pond that can injure the fish.
This can be very simple objects. Originally we had tile plates covering the bottom drains of the pond to improve the appearance of the drains--the fish would ram under the tiles (who knows why) and bruise their noses, which then got infected. We removed the tile covers and haven't had problems since.
- Keep
salt in the pond at all times.
Use a test kit to measure salt content but we keep the salt content about 1% using the rock salt used for water softeners. To keep from burning fish, we put the salt in the waterfall and let the water dispense it into the pond. The salt acts as a medication (quickly healed the bruised noses from the tiles--above).
- Introduce
new fish every year.
Brings in new bugs to keep existing fish defense systems up.
- Do
a partial water change (5%) every week during feeding season.
We are lucky to have well water so no chlorine treatment is needed.
- No
feed after the water temperature drops to 50 degrees or less.
This was hard to do the first year--they were so small! But they don't seem to be bothered. We are of the school that a cold fish cannot digest much food, and since biological filters don't work during cold weather, any waste the fish produced will degrade water quality. Our fish really let us know when to stop feeding as they just don't come begging any more--and in spring, they begin begging again when the water is above 50.
- Sit pondside and enjoy their antics!
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