Essentials of Koi Fish Care for Backyard Ponds
In today’s article, Epiphany will take you through the 4 essentials of koi fish care for backyard ponds. Monitoring your pond’s water quality, feeding your koi fish the right food, creating a balanced ecosystem and completing seasonal maintenance are all essential in keeping your koi fish happy and healthy. Let’s take a look at these essentials in more detail.
Keep your koi fish happy and healthy with proper pond maintenance!
Koi Fish Care
Water Quality
If you have koi fish, you will need to make sure the quality of your pond water is suitable for their health. To do this, you will need to be aware of the following:
General Water Temperature
Koi prefer cooler water temperatures and can survive in water temperatures between 15 and 25 degrees Celsius.
Ammonia Levels
simply put, you don't want your pond to have ammonia in it. To combat this, you can add beneficial bacteria, use ammonia removers or change your koi's pond water.
Nitrite and Nitrate Levels
Ideally, you do not want any nitrites in your pond water; however, nitrates of 20 - 60 parts per million are acceptable. Usually, plants can remove nitrates from your pond water, but if either of these levels gets too high, you will want to consider partial water changes.
For partial water changes, it is recommended that you only change 5 - 15% of your pond’s water. For more information on this, check out this article, “Water Changes In Your Koi Pond” by Koitotheworld.com.
You can also improve your pond water quality by increasing the good bacteria in your pond water and making sure that your pond is being properly aerated.
pH Levels
According to Nextdaykoi.com, between 7.0 and 8.6 is the ideal pH reading for healthy and happy koi fish.
pH levels that are too high or too low can equally harm your koi fish. If the Ph level is too low, fish can suffer from Acidosis; if the pH level is too high, fish can suffer from Alkalosis. To better understand pH levels and the health of koi fish, check out this article from koihealth.info.
Even if your pond water looks clean, it may not be the proper quality for healthy koi fish!
Koi Fish Food
Here are some things to remember about the proper feeding of your fish:
1. Don't overfeed your fish. If they can't eat it all in 5 minutes, you probably gave them too much!
2. Feed your fish healthy food. According to the video below from Aqauscape.com, you’ll want to feed your koi fish food that is:
High in protein, particularly fish proteins (since fish feed on other fish)
Low in fat (since fish have a hard time digesting food that is high in fat, it will become waste which can then lower the quality of your pond water)
Created with a multi-vitamin (for optimum fish health)
Packaged in a container that will prevent it from spoiling (keeping it dry and away from light)
Giving your koi fish a healthy diet is important, but proper feeding also helps maintain the quality of your pond water. Watch the Aquascape video below on choosing fish food and be sure to watch the full video for some amusing bloopers at the end!
Above is the Aquascape video on what to feed fish - with some funny bloopers at the video's end, too!
Koi Fish Plants
As you read earlier, koi fish prefer cooler water temperatures. Given this, It is important to give your koi fish shade. To offer them shade and to keep you pond’s ecosystem balanced, plants are a must. Plus, they look great!
Some possible plants to add to your koi pond are as follows:
Water Lilies
Water Iris
Lotus
Water lettuce
Umbrella plants
The above plants are floating plants or shallow water plants for the edge of your koi pond; however, you can also add plants underwater such as Fanwort.
Koi Fish Seasonal Maintenance
With each season comes different needs for your Koi fish and koi pond, whether it is a spring pond clean-up (checking your pond liner and cleaning filters) or reducing the amount of food for your koi fish in the fall and winter months when their metabolism slows down. Depending on the climate, some fish are not fed at all during the Winter.
Find out some seasonal tips and products here from Aquascape and check out their video below on fall and winter maintenance. Note that there is a section about feeding fish special cold water food during the winter; however, this is near the end of the video.
Learn how to care for your koi fish according to the season!
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