Taking care of koi fishstarts off even before your koi pond is built and before you buy your koi at your local pet store. Proper planning is involved before building your koi pond, such as how deep your koi pond will be, will there be any ledges for pond plants and water lilies and how will you protect your koi fish from predators. Koi fish care starts by learning as much as you can before you jump into a very rewarding hobby.

Koi Fish Pond - Beautiful Water Garden in Backyard

 
 require plenty of space to grow and live. For your koi pond you will need to make sure you provide your new pond fish with a suitable environment, proper filtration and adequate oxygen. If you are going to be succesful in taking care of koi fish you will need to provide a very clean environment for your new fish. In order to do so you will need to have a good pond filter and one that can handle the amount of fish waste being produced. Think of it like your pond filtration is the heart of your koi pond. Once the pond filter fails, everything begins to fall apart and many things can go wrong. You need to have a very good pond pump and pond filter for your water garden for your koi fish to stay healthy.

Koi fish

Learn How To Take Care Of A Koi Fish Pond To Fully Enjoy The Hobby!

Also remember before adding any koi fish to your pond you will need to add beneficial bacteria to your pond to help start get the ecosystem running properly. The beneficial bacteria is what helps keep your koi fish healthy as it breaks down fish waste making it less toxic to koi known as the nitrogen cycle.  After doing water changes and adding fresh water to your koi pond you should always replenish the beneficial bacteria by adding some. Taking care of koi fish is rewarding but there are many necessary steps to keep koi healthy.

Tip: Buy Koi Fish From A Reputable Friendly Clean Pet Store Or Koi Breeder

After you’ve decided on your koi pond plans and built your garden pond your going to need to buy some koi fish for your new water garden. Koi care starts right here as you need to know what a healthy koi looks like. When you buy sick or injured koi you are adding nothing but problems to your new pond and may very well infect your already established healthy fish in your pond. It is very important to understand everything you can about koi diseases so you can prevent the introduction of diseases and parasites into your koi pond.  Never buy koi fish from an aquarium that has sluggish fish, dead fish or visible signs of illnesses or diseases. Always buy your koi fish from a reputable koi dealer. Remember if the pet store is dirty think of how well the fish tanks are being maintained and how well the koi fish are being cared for. Image is everything and you should buy from a pet store that is clean and have a knowledgeable staff. Before you buy your koi fish ask as many questions you can like what type of fish food are they feeding their koi,  how often are they feeding their koi, have the koi been treated lately for any diseases and if so what fish medication have been used? Ask whatever questions you want as they should know the answers to all your koi questions. If not, thank goodness for the Internet as you can find tons of resources all about koi right online.

Hand Feeding Koi Fish By Pond

When it comes to feeding your koi fish in your new pond it depends on the time of year that will determine the type of koi food you will be feeding them. In fall you will feed koi a lighter food that is much easier to digest. During the summer you can feed your koi a fish food with higher protein. You should only feed them what they can eat within five minutes. Any food left over after five minutes can deteriorate your water quality and foul it up. Never leave any uneaten food in your koi pond!

After you know all the facts about koi, taking care of koi fish is not that hard at all. If you have all the proper pond equipment, you should relatively have little to do with pond maintenance. You should however check your pond water at least once a week and top up your koi fish pond with water when needed. In the meantime I hope you all enjoy your new garden pond and taking care of koi fish is a very fun and rewarding hobby to be in.

Well as you all know fall is here but what does that mean in terms of feeding koi for fall and getting your koi fish ready for winter? What people need to do is keep a close eye on the temperature of the water in your koi pond. The temperature lets people know when and what to feed to your pond fish.

You see as the water temperature lowers so does the koi fish metabolism as well. Koi and goldfish have a hard time digesting food at lower temperatures. In fall people should switch to a light food that makes it easy to digest for fish. PondCare has Spring and Fall Floating Food Sticks that people can feed to their fish in lower temperatures. You can feed your koi down to 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

Once the temperature is below 50 degrees stop feeding your koi. Feeding your koi at temperatures lower then 50 degrees can harm fish and possibly kill them. The same thing goes for feeding koi in spring, wait till the temperature is above 50 degrees to resume feeding. Start off in spring feeding them a light food which its main ingredient is wheat germ. When the water temperature is 60 degrees or below you should be feeding koi wheat germ based foods only until the water temperature begins to warm up you can begin to think about switching fish foods. Just remember when feeding koi in fall and spring keep record of the water temperature as it can impact your koi health.

When feeding koi, koi enthusiast need to feed the best nutrition possible and a variety of foods to keep the bright colours and excellent growth. Koi fish care isn’t all just about aquarium maintenance or koi pond maintenance. Caring for you koi comes by what fish food we feed them as well. There are fish foods on the market that contain essential nutrients that actually bring out the colours in your koi and nutrients that keep them healthy as well. Also there is high growth koi food you can buy that accelerates their growth. You also need to make sure you feed your fish pond the proper food as well. In spring feeding, summer feeding and fall feeding you need to feed your koi different foods to keep them healthy. Different seasons your koi’s digestive system works differently and I will talk more later about what to feed your koi fish in different seasons.

First of all, if you are growing koi fish in an aquarium, they will only grow to the size of their environment. When I say this it doesn’t mean that if your tank is a foot long, your koi will grow to be a foot long as well. Picture that, it would look pretty sad, your koi wouldn’t even be able to really turn in the aquarium. What I mean by this, is that it will only grow to the potential of its environment. What happens with growing koi fish in an aquarium it stunts their growth. So your koi won’t grow to be as big as they should. The environment plays a big part on the growth of your koi.

Second thing that plays a huge impact on the size of koi fish is nutrition. Are your koi getting the best nutrition they can be getting? Also how often they are being fed as well determines the size of koi.

When koi fish have a large environment to grow in such as a koi fish pond and the proper nutrition, koi can grow to be quite large. I would say koi generally grow to be about 15-24″ long but koi can grow to be larger as well. Factors include nutrition, what your feeding them and the size of your koi fish pond. If you have a large pond and its deep as well I wouldn’t be surprised of your koi growing larger. There are many ways to increasing the size of koi and improving koi fish colours as well which I will talk more about later.

Here is something I want to share with everyone. People are always interested in the size of koi, well you need to see this. Check out this picture below of a koi fish that I seen, it’s truly remarkable.

Look at the size of that Kohaku koi that he is carrying. That’s huge! If you look at his face it looks like it weighs quite a bit as well. Koi fish can grow very big, this koi is a prime example of why growing koi fish in mud ponds works so well.

Check out the size and width of this koi. The width is twice the size of his forearm. You can tell by the size that these koi fish were well fed in the mud pond.