Koi pond maintenance: keep your pond live and healthy

Do you have a koi pond in your garden/backyard or want to build one? Do you need to learn how to take proper care of it and ensure necessary maintenance to preserve the water clean and its inhabitants striving? While koi pond is a great thing to have on your property, as it’s a great site to come, enjoy the calmness of the water, observe the fish and connect to nature, setting up the pond is much easier than keeping it alive.

These tips will help you learn the most essential koi pond maintenance steps to set up an effective routine from the day one of your pond’s existence, avoid the most harmful issues and make sure that this gem of your backyard remains healthy and appealing.

How to maintain a koi pond

1. Install a filtration system

   It’s necessary to keep the water clean even in normal man made backyard ponds, which don’t have any fish or living plants in them. But, maintaining water constantly clear is a vital thing for a koi pond. Thus, have your landscaping contractor and a qualified plumber install a highly efficient water filtration system that’s designed to handle the amount pf water your pond is filled with in advance. It has to remove all the debris, as well as organic waste produced by fish. If attempt making a pond on your own, try your best to ensure electricity safety or ask an electrician from HireRush.com to install a water filter for you to avoid hazardous situations. It’s also nice to plant various water filtrating plants in and around the pond as an extra assistance. Plus, they look really nice.
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2. Keep the water fresh

   Change water every month and keep it fresh on the daily basis by draining up to 10-15 percent of pond water and replacing it each day. Again, it’s a highly beneficial thing for a live backyard pond with koi or other fish. Every time you do that, clean the sides of the pond, its bottom, as well as all the rocks, tiles, fake plants and other elements you put in and around it using warm water and algae scrub for algae growth prevention.

3. Skim the water and take care of the surrounds

   Remove leaves, muck, dead plant pieces from the water surface of your koi pond, as the filtration system is not designed to handle this debris. Pond experts note that even bugs falling into the pond may damage the fish, which decides to eat them, so get rid of those as well. Leaf nets for pond will help you avoid frequent skimming during fall.

4. Look out for the temperature

   Although koi are quite great at surviving during the cold months and they will even hibernate under the ice when the pond freezes, you still have to help your koi out by de-icing the pond to promote proper gas exchange and help the fish survive the winter. Do not break the ice manually not to damage the fish in your garden pond. Use a floating de-icer for that matter. Plat bigger plants around the pond to create shade for summer and make sure that the water remains not too hot during the heat waves.

5. Don’t let too many koi in

   It might seem quite rewarding when you notice that the fish in your koi pond is striving and breeding. But, koi need room to live, thus you need to keep their population under control. Otherwise, an overpopulated koi pond may get too crowded and dirty. Water pumps and filtration system will not be able to deal with the waste, causing significant discomfort to fish. If you don’t want your pond to die, keep as many fish in it as the space allows. Specifically, you don’t want to keep more than 3lbs of fish per 100 gallons of water in your backyard pond.

6. Check koi pond water quality

   Fish are quite sensitive to the quality of the water, even though strong koi might not show the signs of distress till the conditions get really poor. Bad water with disturbed levels of certain chemicals may cause fish deaths. Observe the koi’s behavior and test the water on a regular basis to deter possible problems at their root. On top of that, you may use water conditioner compatible with koi ponds to improve the quality of the pond’s water.

7. Learn all about seasonal koi care

   Koi strive in a consistent routine, which, however, has to change according to the season. For instance, it’s better to feed koi with high protein food in summer to let them reserve fat for the cold season, but decrease the number of feedings per day or even per week as the temperature drops below 60^oF, and stop giving fish food at all once it hits 50⁰F and lower. Contact a local fish vet for some koi care advice if needed.

8. Introduce new koi carefully

   Once you get comfortable with having a pond and get better at koi pond maintenance, you might want to add more fish to it. In that case, be aware of the parasites and infections koi transmit and buy only from a reliable koi fish suppliers not to put your own fish at risk. Even if you trust the seller, quarantine new koi and replace the water in the pond before letting them in. It’s not recommended to introduce new inhabitants to the koi pond in spring, though, as at this time your fish is quite weak and more sensitive to external irritants, infections, and parasites.