Wet Pets: The Joy of Koi

Jennifer Eileen
May 11
5 min read

Pet Info Cafe Interview Question: Today’s topic is sbout wet pets and koi. I do have to ask what is the attraction to something with scales that you can't hug and pet?

Karen Weiner: The koi know me, they're beautiful, they're stunning. I think the draw to it is is just being able to keep one alive for as long as we can. They can live a really long time, and it's a lot of maintenance, it's a lot of water quality ,and it's a lot of care. They're beautiful and they get really large. So as far as not being able to handle them like a normal pet I think people get into koi because of their beauty. They're a gorgeous fish and the other thing is it's exciting to have a little 5-inch fish grow into a 28 massive koi. It is a lot of maintenance. They can live a long time. A lot of people don't understand is that koi are long lived they do live a long time. Fish in general can live a long time if the maintenance if the water quality and if the care is precise, they can live a long time.

Interview Question: How you got involved it seems like there there's a landscaping aspect of a koi pond, some people might want to start it because it's pretty in their yard; some people do it because they love the koi for all the reasons.

Karen Weiner: There are three different ponds that people do. Make sure that your landscaper knows about filtration, and you want a lot of movement. But you need that filtration. Normally they don't put in filtration.

It's normally just a submersible pump, and then a waterfall, and those 2 are connected underground. But there's not any filtration.

The Koi Keepers of North America, and they're fabulous on asking questions. And these are all the professionals they really are. They're the ones that show

1. You've got a big pond that's a swim pond that usually people will have it natural not a lot of filtration. it's the natural pond maybe they'll swim in it they have fish in it.

2. Then you've got an ornamental pond which I consider the landscape pond which really consists of just a pump and a waterfall, not a lot of filtration. A pond is strictly for the koi you've got to do your filtration. Fish are dirty animals they do they do have a lot of debris.

3. If you're going to do a koi pond you have to have the filtration and I see a lot of people have issues with their ponds because they haven't done the filtration.

Interview Question for Joy Miller: I remember when this was being built right now how many koi do we have in this pond?

Joy Miller: About 9, most of some of these are 15 years old some are one year old. When I put this pond in, I was trying to put in the little pond and I did this all by myself and I was going through some grief at the time, so I kept digging. I found it very therapeutic to dig so this got very big for the small space that's in. It is 11 by 7 by above my knee (about 3 feet). The koi stay in here all year long, they hibernate in the wintertime so they do not eat and may they swim really slow in the wintertime, they're barely moving, and then in the spring when it's spawning time they're crazy.

Jennifer: That's something really interesting about koi because we are in Chicago so temperatures can get very cold in the winter.

Joy: Exactly so I keep the bubbler going year-round as long as there's a hole in the ice they will survive. If there's not a hole in the ice the gases killed them so you got to always keep a hole in the ice so the bubbler keeps going. I do have a little heater that I put in once in a while when it gets to be about wind chill 30 below but mostly the bubbler just keeps the water going enough so it's fine. I feed them Cheerios when they're first coming out of hibernation because since their guts haven't been working all winter you want to give them something without protein so their whole system starts going if you feed them the wrong thing goodbye koi, but otherwise they're very easy to grow. They will eat algae they will eat stuff in the pond you throw worms in there and they're gone. Some of these in here are Mamas and Papas of some of the babies in the pond. I give them away. They keep growing. will get very big. They're supposed to grow to the size of the pond but they're bigger than the size of the pond. They call them whales now. And everything here is lit up at night.

Composting the Filtered Koi Pond (Joy Miller)

The key to good gardening is compost.

Every two weeks when I clean up the koi pond all the muck that comes out of the filters which is a lot goes right in here so you feed the fish the fish eat it digest it goes into the into the filter then it goes right into here. And goes into the garden.

We use a double barrel composter so one is cooking one is being added to so this goes year round we tumble it we also have barrels that keep leaves in and old mushroom growing compost in and we add it to this and it goes into other barrels and it goes into the garden. We use no chemicals, we get about 3 barrels full of compost per year and goes in the garden.

Predators:

Karen Weiner: I don't worry about the raccoons, because I have no shelves in my pond. That's another thing. If you want to deter the heron and other and raccoons don't do shelves. A straight foot down on mine is 4 foot deep. I have no shelves, so it goes straight down. Raccoons aren't going to swim to the bottom of my pond. Heron are not going to be able to reach the koi at the bottom of my pond, but I also keep my pond netted all year round. 24, 7. I never take the net off.