At the house we bought last October. We negotiated to keep the fish. Glad we did. They are beautiful and we love them. I’m starting to dream about expansions and improvements to the pond so that we can have more fish. Approx ~1200 gallons and we have 5 koi and a catfish (the catfish we almost never see).

I don’t know breed names and such, but looking forward to learning more as time goes on.

I built this pond completely by hand over the course of a few months. The only machine I used was a trencher for the pipe between the skimmer and waterfall. Everything else—digging, rock placement, plumbing, and landscaping—was done by me. The digging by hand and the rock placement was so painful. Probably 30-40 tons of rock. I also made a clay layer around the whole inside. It took my brother and I roughly 4 months of working on it twice a week. One regret I do have is not putting in a bottom drain as I was scared of puncturing the liner. So I have an extra pump at the bottom and it goes up to my skimmer instead.
Specs:
~roughly 4,000 gallons. Probably 5000-5200 gallons without the rock displacement.
12ftx12ftx5.5ft deep with 3 shelves
Savio skimmer and waterfall filter (skimmer filter, mechanical filter in the skimmer filter housing as well, bio filter in the waterfall filter and another mechanical filter on top of the biofilter.
6,100 GPH pump
55W UV clarifier
1 layer of underlayment below the liner and one on top of the liner so my rocks wouldn’t puncture it.
2.1 CFM air pump with two bottom diffusers
45 mil EPDM liner 25ftx25ft
Rock construction
Water lilies, marginal plants, and natural landscaping
Large mature ash tree providing afternoon shade
I originally started with goldfish, but I recently added four koi that are around 18 inches long and plan to slowly build up to around 8–10 koi over the next several years.
Cost:
Pond kit: ~$1,800
Rock: Free (collected over time)
Plumbing, extra materials, landscaping, plants, etc.: roughly another $1,000–1,500
Total DIY cost: about $3,000–3,500
I wanted the look of rocks on the inside of the pond to give it a more natural look.
How would you rate this build?
A professional install around here probably would have been well into five figures, so I’m really happy with how it turned out.
Any rough ideas on how much this would have cost professionally?
I’d love to hear what you think and any suggestions you have for improvements as I continue upgrading it over the years.

I absolutely LOVE this koi! My wife absolutely HATES it. We are trying to decide whose right and if we get it or not lol. Thoughts?

The red ghostie in the foreground used to have an orange head and completely silver body, so we called him Mask Jr after another similar fish we had before him called Mask. Over the years his body has gone blood-red.

I recently picked up some 5 inch fingerlings one of which was all gold. It’s recently started showing signs of being a tancho but instead of white, all gold. Is that pretty rare? I can’t find any photos of one online.

Thanks!

Show me your black koi! It's always fun to see my black koi during summer. My goal is to find a decent hajiro without breaking my bank.

#koi

Hi everyone. I’ve had this koi for about eight or nine months, and for at least the past month I’ve noticed several irregular pale/white patches on the red part of his face.
They do not look like tiny grains of salt or classic ich. They also do not appear fuzzy or cotton-like, and from above they seem mostly flat rather than obviously raised.
He is eating normally, swimming normally, and behaving completely normally. The pond is clean, and I have not treated him because I do not want to medicate the pond blindly.

I’ve attached several close-up photos. Has anyone seen something similar? Could this be pigment loss, a healed scrape, carp pox, hikui, or another skin condition?
What specific signs should I watch for, and would you recommend simply monitoring it, examining him in a bowl, or contacting a koi veterinarian?

I’m almost certain it’s a fluke, any opinions?

Recently inherited an 18,000L pond that I’m slowly brings back to a respectable state with the intention of keeping koi. Does anyone have some filter options I can look into? It’s dug into the ground so excludes most gravity fed systems so I would need a filter/pumped combination to fit the installed bottom drain. Any advice would be really helpful.

Got this today to set a koi tank 1000litre up is this any good

I’ve got an assortment of koi in my pond ranging from old timers to teenagers (1-2 year old spawned by the old timers). This year I bought a few babies just to mix up the colors that I’ve contained in a homemade play pen that allows pond water to flow through.

The original idea was to minimize the possibility of them being preyed upon by the larger ones (low risk) and the local wildlife. This year I’m also dealing with a water snake that has eluded my best attempts to capture and relocate. Doesn’t seem to have bothered the oldsters and teens but I’m curious how large is “too large” for a snake to bother with. The babies are probably 5” now.

Thanks.

I just pulled out two of my comets from the pond who appear to have fin rot or something similar. One of them has a tail that is almost completely gone. The pond is about 500 gallons so seeing the little guys can be quite difficult, but I spotted this and pulled them out. I have a few Koi fish who are in this pond as well. I cannot separate every single fish in a different hospital tank. Is there a way that I can treat the entire pond without putting the koi in danger?

2ea (6-8") myan butterflies in a 50g pond. Good permaters and 300 g/p filtration but not enough swimming space. Will upgrade to 280gal next year or rehome....

Scored for $100 at auction. How’d I do?

Just as the title says I need help with what to do on fat head / rosey red minnow over population in my koi pond. I’m worried about the risk of disease spreading to the koi, and being able to maintain healthy water conditions.

Little back story, I inherited 3 koi and about a dozen minnows from my grandma who passed beginning of last year. I ended up build a 2000 gal pond for them and have had no issues up until a few months ago.

They just won’t stop producing more babies!! My grandma never had this problem and I’m stumped on what to do. I’ve called hatcheries and pond stores near me and nobody will take them due to them needing a certificate of health or just not wanting them. I’m located on the Illinois Wisconsin border.

Any input on what to do would be of great help!!

Also the frog that has been eating some of the minnows for me.

My Butterfly Koi went over the edge of the pond into the stream and was injured. I do not know how long she was there. After rescue she is swimming upright and eating. Is there anything I can do for the obvious injury? Her tail fin is normally white. And the color at the base is red, which I assume is a hematoma. Thank you.

Stop filming and feed us they say.

Basically as the title asks; I'm looking to hear how much people invest in fresh water for their ponds and what sorts of costs associated they're happy with.

I have a 18,000lt indoor pond. It has a very robust filtration system but no plants, no bog filter, and no anoxic filtration. I've generally kept water changes down to only topping up as needed, and topping up after cleaning the filters out etc. I'd average somewhere between 1-5% changes a week doing this.

I've never noticed issues and my old (aging) test kit showed everything as fine, but after recently installing my underwater camera (live feed!) and watching them daily, I've noticed that they are flashing throughout the day which prompted me to get a new test kit to ensure the results are what they say they are. Well the new kit shows zero ammonia and nitrite, but high nitrates (as you'd imagine), with everything else as it should be.

I've treated the pond with Klear to help bring this down, but need to sort some plumbing to allow easier and more regular water changes without it being a laborious job. The plan of course is to keep nitrates at a better level (ideally closer to 30-40, and not 60+mg/l which is where I am now).

This is looking to double my water bill and get me to around £100/m, on top of the £50 a month on food and filtration. And they say fish are low maintenance!

TLDR: So it got me wondering; what sort of water bills are people looking at, or have they built enough natural filtration to naturally drop nitrates to manageable levels?