Things to Know about Koi Care for Beginners
Do you have plans of bringing Koi into your life?
If so you are making a great decision, while these beautiful creatures are easy to care for, there are still several different factors that need to be taken into account.
Read on to discover the key things to know about koi care for beginners.
If it is your first time taking care of koi, it is critical that you do your homework before brining one home. Here are a few of the valuable facts that you may like to consider about keeping koi:
- Koi are generally a peaceful fish but they can harass slower fish.
- They could grow pretty large with some fish measuring upwards of 36 inches in length.
- They originate from Japan.
- Koi can live for a very long time and have been known to live up to and over 50 years.
- Koi are capable of surviving in a broad range of water temperatures.
- They are very smart fish and can learn to eat from your hands and even recognize you.
Generally speaking most koi enthusiasts are very particular about the quality of water and filtration.
But, koi are not that difficult to care and can very easily look after themselves, all you need to do is to provide them with food.
However, most ponds that Koi call home aren’t large enough to be self-sustaining.
This is really where understanding the basics around koi pond care for beginners comes into it’s own.
The main reason to have a filtration systems is to remove fish waste from the pond.
This is critical as stagnant water could endanger the lives of your fish.
You may want to invest in a filtration system that consolidates the distinct phases of filtration to effectively eliminate each form of waste from the pond.
The Right Environment For Koi
Creating the perfect eco system will ensure that your fish family not only survives but thrives.
The pond should be a minimum of three feet in depth, doing this ensures that your fish avoid significant temperature fluctuations.
Generally speaking it you should also look to protect your koi with elevated edges that should deter predators such as raccoons and herons from entering the pond (this can sometimes be harder than you may think).
Koi care for beginners or where to start with caring for your koi?
When it comes to basic care, it is imperative to keep the pond free of waste and provide sufficient food to your koi.
Your filter system should really do the bulk of the cleaning work, so buy a good quality filter system.
The extra money that you spend on a top-quality filter system should generally speaking see low maintenance cost and time whereas a low-quality filter system may necessitate more tedious work to keep it operating.
When feeding your koi, generally look to do twice per day depending on the season, the warmer it is the more you feed them the cool it is the less.
See to it to provide them an amount of food that they consume within five minutes.
Overfeeding is not advised this could result in fat fish and could also encourage poor quality of water.
As mentioned above just keep in mind the time of the year koi have distinct feeding requirements as the weather changes.
Handling Your Koi
Koi get tend to easily stress when they are being handled, so as much as possible avoid netting them.
When koi become stressed, there is a greater likelihood that their immune system will get suppressed, this makes them weak to various bacterial infections.
Where can I keep Koi?
When it comes to heat, light, sunshine, winter and ice, it is worth taking into consideration that outdoor koi are robust and tend to hibernate under the ice during the colder months of the year so long as their pond is deep.
As long as the pond doesn’t completely freeze some breeds can stay safe.
When designing your pond, make sure that it is partly sheltered. It is also helpful to consider setting up a light within an indoor aquarium to light it up for between 8 and up to 12 hours per day.
Koi thrive in water that is between 65 & 75-degrees F.
This article really only skims across the very high level basics around Koi care for beginners, if you would like to explore other resources that go into a lot more detail we recommend that you check out the following resources:
