Unless your garden design can employ running water traversing your garden a Koi filter is an absolute necessity. Koi eliminate from their bodies pollutants that will kill them if the pollutants are not removed from your pond. In nature large volumes of water and natural purifiers ensure that Koi have clean water in which to live and swim.
Koi Filters - Why Needed
Garden ponds are closed systems. With no pumps or filters the pond would become a stagnant pool and the Koi would die in their own waste products. A good Koi pond has a good pump and filter to circulate the water. The water passes through the pump to the filter. Filters vary in their features. Koi filters should remove waste particles from the water. Bacteria in the filter should break down much of the Koi pollutants such as ammonia. Within the filter an Ultra violet light source should kill many harmful bacteria and thus a Koi filter should both filter and purify the water.
Koi Filters - A Number of Factors
Unfortunately most filters will only be able to support a limited number of Koi and so it is important that you do not over stock your pond. A number of factors come into play in this equation
The size of the pond and its volume of water
The size of the pump - how many gallons or litres of water it can move per hour
The size of the filter
The number of Koi in the pond
The temperature of the water
The amount of food you are giving the Koi.
You need to ensure that the Koi Filter is not the smallest or the weakest link in the equation. If you are starting up a new pond take it slowly. Give the filter time to build its complement of beneficial bacteria. Keep your Koi levels well down while all this is settling down.
Koi Filters - Helping Them Out
While this system can work at this level it is better to assist the Koi filter do its work by adding other natural resources. The best of these is aquatic plans. This range of plants will actually live on the pollutants produced by the Koi. Ammonia and nitrates are taken up by the plants as they grow. This reduces the amount of work the filter has to do and will enable you to add more Koi once the plants are established and growing well. An additional feature is that if you can really get these plants established you should have little problem with algae since these plants will deprive the algae of the nutrients they also need to grow.
Koi Filter - Koi and the Plants
It would be helpful if the Koi were not so destructive of these aquatic plants. This would enable the Koi and the plants to co-exist in the one pond. This is not impossible if care is taken to have the plants growing in pots with their pot rims just slightly above the level of the pond. However a better option is to have two ponds with the plants in the first pond at a higher level. The Koi in the second pond should be at a much lower level. This arrangement allows for the introduction of a waterfall which will server to aerate or oxygenate the water adding a further natural process to your pond system and providing a much needed assistance to your Koi Filter. Fountains and air-stones also assist the aeration of the water.
Koi Filter - The Heart of any Koi pond
Thus the heart of any Koi pond is its filter and the other systems that assist the filter keep the water crystal clear for the Koi. As you start off resist the temptation to keep adding Koi to your pond. Start slowly and let the system build up naturally. The filter will do its work but you will need to give it time to build up. Monitor the water with your test kit, only in this way will you know when the filter has reached its operating level and thus allow you to add more Koi.
If you want to learn more about Koi visit www.koihowto.com where you will find a lot more information about these colorful fish.
