Today another koi club member came to take a look at the koi and offer some advice on a winter pond. Another koi club member had thrown out the idea of a hoop house and we are leaning very much towards a hoop house over our small pond. Of course there are some things we need to do in order to get the pond ready. The pond digger’s favorite task – moving more rocks …

So once again we have an unfinished pond with rocks everywhere. The nice thing about pulling the pond apart is we have a chance to spray down the liner with some hydrogen peroxide which will discourage algae growth.  Tony plans on putting in a larger bottom drain and the removal of rocks will be adding a few hundred gallons.

We’re also thinking about how to encourage the koi to swim more in this pond.  In the upper pond, the koi swim around a great deal, somewhat lazily in a relaxed manner. This pond is for the young koi and they tend to huddle as a group rather than do a lot of swimming.  Everyone is is in the large pond and the little ones have taken to swimming around with the big guys. Immediate improvement in 30 minutes.

The last thing we considered was thinning the herd for the winter pond.  Since all the koi would be going into smaller quarters, and they don’t really do anything except hover in place, we could have possibly kept them all. But why take chances? So we picked out five koi to give to a very dear friend who has 85000 gallons of water. Last winter, 99% of his koi were killed/eaten by a river otter that took up residence in his pond. We are sending two of our largest koi, Momochan and Frank (who really is a Francis…) and three smaller koi. I think this will be an annual task since overcrowding is definitely a no-no for koi. It does make it easier that I know these koi will be going to a wonderful pond 🙂  Goodbye Momo and Frank…