I recently purchased three Koi. They were about the size of an average gold fish when I brought them home a month ago. They are growing by leaps and bounds. Already more than doubling in size. Has anyone had experience with Koi? How do they winter over? The sales girl recommended some sort of enriched diet food in the fall, in order to prepare them for the winter.

Dan,
I’ve had Koi for 12 years. They started out in the 4" range and now are over 20". Here in California over wintering is them sitting on the bottom from December to the end of January with no food. I’ve never fed them with any special diet to make it through the winter. As the Koi got larger they ate all my Water Lilies and other assorted plants. Now I plant Watercress in the nooks and cranes of the rocks, it grows like a weed. You can buy one bunch at Safeway and it will produce an unlimited supply, it roots in a day, the fish love it and it regenerates quickly. You’ll need a good filter system they produce large size “waste”. There’s tons of info on the web. Good Luck.

Dan if your water freezes make sure you have a heater or something to keep the water moving and from freezing completly. As long as you have a hole in the ice they will be fine. Make sure the water is deep enough so it does not freeze solid to the bottom.
I had KOI for a while. I stopped feeding them in the fall and just put a heater in the pond. Water here frezes over from dec through march.

A small air stone will keep the water moving and normally will keep a hole in the ice by this motion, if your climate is not super cold.

Greg

I had a pond… once… gave it to a friend…

I kept 5 koi-like goldfish alive for 4 years by using a horse-trough heater in the winter. It cost a lot less from the horse store than a pond heater cost at the pond store. It used less electricity, and worked as well.

Around here(20 miles north of Spokane, WA at 2600 ft ASL), water will freeze to a depth of 3-4 feet for part of most winters.

We have had Koi for about 12 years now. Pond is 30" deep and they just go dormant in the winter. There are special fish foods for fall and spring, but you can also get some that is good for year round. No feeding in the winter. As stated above, they just slow down go to the bottom and wait for Spring.

The watercress is a good idea. The plants they don’t eat they destroy by emptying out all of the potting soil.

My wife has kept Koi for years. We put the pond in here in GA about 2 years ago. about 2,500 gallons. 3 to 4 feet deep at the deepest (Heron’s don’t like water that deep). In the summer we put water cabbage and Hyacinths in - usually grow and multiply faster than the fish can eat them. For potted plants we put some large rocks in the bottom of the plastic pot, the the soil and plan and then smaller rocks (“river rock”) on the top. They tend to leave those plants alone. If we find they won’t leave them alone, there are plastic baskets you can get that keeps the fish away from the pot. We have one water lily that the fish pushed off the plant ledge last year and it fell to the very bottom. Thought it was a lost cause, but this year it put up leaves and is doing very well, even though the water is almost 3 times as deep as what the literature says this kind will survive. We only get about 1 inch of ice here, but as Greg says, an air-stone or two will keep the ice open for you.

Be sure before the fish go dormant that you do a good bottom cleaning of the pond. If not, the leaves and things down there will decompose and you will have a mess to clean out in the spring. Depending on the trees you have around, the decomposing can cause issues with the water chemistry for the fish.

Thanks for the info, guys. Some things in there I had not known.

I had a friend that told me to get feeder gold fish for 20 cents each.
They will eat misquote larva keeps them at bay, Koi wont eat them.
But then my pond has a 5 mph current from the water fall 200 gal pond with a 700 gph fall pump, so misquotes shouldn’t be a problem.
My gold fish doubled in size since I put them in the pond about a month ago.
Good Luck

David Kapp said:
I had a friend that told me to get feeder gold fish for 20 cents each. They will eat misquote larva keeps them at bay, Koi wont eat them. But then my pond has a 5 mph current from the water fall 200 gal pond with a 700 gph fall pump, so misquotes shouldn't be a problem. My gold fish doubled in size since I put them in the pond about a month ago. Good Luck

Gold fish are great for the ponds. They are much more affordable and if they dont survive no big deal. Only problem with goldfish are they tend to be dirty fish. They produce more waste then KOI and can cloud the water up if you have too many. 10 gold fish creates more waste then 10 KOI. Thats why they make great starter fish to get the tanks natrual proces going faster.

Yes and Ick kills Goldfish and Great Blue Herons kill Koi

The question isss:
What kills ROOSERS???

Sean McGillicuddy said:
The question isss: What kills ROOSERS???

Grandma always said "Grab 'em by the neck and give 'em a quick crank"

Great Blue Herons don’t kill Koi, they just swallow them without a pause. Railroading friends lost two batches before they “retired” from raising fish to feed the birds!

Yes but doesn’t swallowing a Koi kill it ?

A few of us clubbers help another member put in a small garden RR for him.
He has Koi. The pond is over 8 feet deep, 25’ long and the fish are 3 feet long.
And, (Are you sitting down) he has Koi’s that are registered and cost $20,000 +++++ each!
Under is deck are pumps, filters, pipes. Looks like a chemical plant or something. The filters
are 4 or 5 feet across and 5 feet high.
There is a quarantine tank in his garage for the “sick” or imported fish he buys now and then.
Flown directly from Japan.
This guy is nuts!

$20,000 bucks a fish! That’d require at least a $500 pole and a $20 pedigreed worm.

We have a net over the pond to keep the Herions away. works .
Fish are 20+/_’’
Sean

I was always under the impression that koi were kept expressly for the purpose of heron-feeding. That’s the way it goes around here, anyhow.

tac & ig & The Wallowa County Boys

Richard Smith said:
$20,000 bucks a fish! That'd require at least a $500 pole and a $20 pedigreed worm. ;) :) :D

I'm sure glad that our Pat doesn't charge THAT much for fish & chips!

tac & ig & The Humbug Mountain Boys