Well, I moved in to my new home on Wednesday. It was a busy day and exhausting and I have several days ahead of unpacking and organizing things just to make the place seem livable. I need to take care of the Koi Pond twice a day but it was pretty late Wednesday when I managed to get out there to clean the filter and feed the fish....barely daylight but I got it done.
Let me describe the Koi Pond for you. When I came to look at the house I saw that there was a water feature out in the front enclosed yard. I thought, "Gee, how cute. It looks nice." There is a little water fall and the water flows down a stream and under a bridge and tumbles into a pond that is about 15' by 8' in sort of an irregular oval shape...all lined in smooth river stones. It looks nice and well cared for. There are water lilies and bull rush looking things and some grassy things and some floating plants. I could see that there were some fish but I didn't pay much attention...I was more interested in the house.
Well, the pond is a little more complicated than that. It has a pump and filtration system and a skimmer and another filter up at the waterfall end. The plants serve as an additional filtration system. When you look closely, you see dozens of tiny little fish about 1.5 inches long. These are mosquito fish that eat the mosquito larva. Next there are a few goldfish swimming around. Goldfish eat algae and some other stuff that occurs naturally in the pond including the mosquito larva. At the top of the list are the Koi fish. Koi fish are the pigs of the fish world. They are some sort of specialized Carp. They will eat everything including those darling little plants that are living in the pond. Koi are voracious eaters. They have a lifespan of 50 to 100 years and reach three feet in length. Koi fish are also expensive. My local dealer sells them for $45 each and these are the standard run-of-the-mill Koi fish. Some Koi fish sell for $40,000 each. I have at least a dozen or more Koi fish in all different colors....orange, red, white, mottled with black or blue/gray and in various combinations of these colors. I suspect that they are up to something and that some of the Goldfish might actually be baby Koi.
The Koi fish live by means of extortion. You must feed them twice a day or they will eat all of your plants. Because they eat twice a day and feed on other stuff if they get a chance, they poop a lot. As I said, these are the pigs of the fish world. Koi poop provides nutrients for algae which reproduces and keeps the Goldfish happy but also clogs up the filters on the pump. So, twice a day I go out and hose off the filters to keep them clean so water can flow through. If the filters get too clogged the water level drops around the pump and it burns out...sort of like the nuclear fuel rods in a reactor, I guess. I have been doing this for a while and when I'm not here my neighbor feeds the fish and cleans the filters. So, anyway, this cute little water feature has become something of a chore.
Like I said, I finally moved in on Wednesday and took care of the pond....everything was fine. On Thursday I got up and started working on unpacking boxes and didn't go out to deal with the pond until around 10 AM (instead of 7 AM -- AS THE KOI ARE ACCUSTOMED TO). So as I go out the front door I hear a funny sound. The water level is down about five inches and the pump is sucking air. What the hell??!! It was fine when I went to bed. I filled up the pond from the hose (well water...no chlorine) and cleaned out the filters (nothing unusual there) and fed the fish. By about 5 PM it was back down about two inches so I filled it up again. Next day...the same thing. I'm losing water at the rate of about four or five inches a day. The water level is usually stable with some evaporation that makes you add water every week or ten days. Great. Day two of my life at the new house and the pond goes on the fritz.
Yesterday, Saturday, I went over to the local water garden nursery that sells pond equipment and fish and plants. I explained my dilemma...I tried not to whimper too much. They said they clean out their filters maybe once a month and showed me the filter on one of their ponds and it was almost black --- much more stuff than what I have. So, I'm cleaning the filter too much...cut it back to once a day and then maybe once a week if it works OK. She said the pump will tell me when it needs to be cleaned because it will make an odd noise...I heard that already.
She said the leak is probably in the plumbing and not in the liner because it sounds like a fast leak. A liner leak would be slower unless it is a gaping hole. The recommended solution is to fill up the pond and turn off the pump for about half a day to see if the water level drops. If not, the leak is in the pump hoses or couplings. If the water still drops the leak is in the liner. If the liner has the leak then I let the water drop to where it stabilizes and then find the hole and patch it with special tape. This requires wading in the pond with the fish. I already fell into the pond once and it is slicker than snot and you can't keep your footing. I am not looking forward to this.
Since Koi fish are such a chore I quizzed her about what alternatives I would have. She said there are Koi rescue groups who will come and take the fish or the nursery will buy back some fish in the spring at a small price...like 10% of the value. Craigslist is another way to get rid of the fish but one must closely monitor the people when they are taking the fish. Switching over to a water garden with only Goldfish and small mosquito fish is the way to go because you can have so many more plants that you can't have with Koi fish because they will eat them. Goldfish don't require daily feeding and you can stock smaller fish to eat the algae that wouldn't live with the Koi. The filter won't need leaning so often.
OKIEDOKIE...that's for me. I have an experiment going on with not cleaning the filters but every other day. I still need to turn off the pump but I can't find the switch...might have to throw the breaker if there is no switch....still looking. Stay tuned.
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