Pond

Back in Chicago at the Koi Whisperer Sanctuary and decided MaryEllen Needed a bigger koi tank. The holiday season brings a tight budget but we managed and MaryEllen wrote up the article on the build for me. Looking forward to building the next three!!!!

The koi whisperer sanctuary is so proud to have had our UK partner back over to us here for the holidays. With the cold weather set in outside we got to work on the brand new show tank for 2012 which will be home to all our japanese imported nishikigoi ready for new homes this coming spring. Splashtastic Aquatics set to work on this tank and in an incredible 3 days working time it was complete with full paint job and its own filter system. We hope you like the images of progress of the build and how great the show tank really looks here in the sanctuary.

Timber construction planned to be 8 feet X 4 feet

Splashtastic Aquatics goes back to Chicago to help M out with the Koi Whisperer Sanctuary. Here is the article MaryEllen wrote up on the work I did for her and the sanctuary.

In June 2010, my indoor koi pond was updated and a waterfall feature was added. For a number of months the system worked well however water conditions and clarity were always a problem and alot of work and effort had to be done daily to maintain the pond for the health and welfare of the koi imported here. I never had water problems before, and even with a high stocking level of imported koi, routine water changes was sufficeint with the external pump filtration I had installed. In March of this year, 2011, many of our KWS Koi Keepers read the devastating news that the pond had collapsed and I woke up to a koi pond full of boulders, stone, muck, and waste.... and my imported Nishikigoi struggling at the bottom in only a few inches of water! The pond was rebuilt with my own specifications which was adhered to by the pond builders. If you missed the article it is available to read by clicking here.

During the winter our pond filters are still working to remove the waste material that builds up in our pond's, the good bacteria that keeps our pond's and fish healthy do slow down however they do not completely die off so the filter should always remain functioning even if only running at half capacity using a ball valve or slide valve to reduce the flow. The good bacteria that remains in our filters are what is needed come spring to kick start the pond back in to life and slowly build up to a fully functioning system. If we turn our filters off completely then every year we would encounter what is known as new pond syndrome which genrally causes problems with water quality and fish health. A popular product in the USA is cold water bacteria which can be added to the pond on a periodical basis however this needs the filter to develop the bacteria to handle the waste material. So the answer is no you should not turn your filter off. Many people have said to us it saves us money to turn the system off, when theoretically it tends to cost more in the long term with treatments and possibly lost fish come spring when new pond syndrome develops.

Time zones are a strange thing and after a long morning with the koi and sturgeon here at splash the thought of a relaxing evening in the sun was on the cards when to our suprise M the koi whisperer sent a desperate email to us for help. With the 6 hour time difference her morning was to turn in to an extensive koi rescue of her own due to complete pond liner failure due to the way the American koi ponds are constructed. Emails back and forth and chat messages using facebook became quiet an art at getting her settled and calm yet it is not the same as actually being there or actually talking to help with what to do so on the telephone i go and gave her a suprise call.

The American ponds are infact more of what we in the UK would call a water feature, there are some very specialist koi ponds that have been built in very much the same way as the koi ponds are built here in the UK however the majority are built by landscapers and water feature specialists. The average depth for one of these ponds is 2 to 3 feet deep and then to make the pond look natural they cover every inch of liner with stones. These stones is what caused the Koi Whisperers pond liner to fail. For reasons unknown some of the larger stones had fallen from the wall of the indoor pond and split the liner causing all but a mere inch or two of water to disappear and leave her beloved koi flapping at the bottom. After rescuing the koi and placing into quarantine tanks ( You can see why having one of these is very important, not only for qurantining new koi or for treating sick koi, they come in very handy for such an emergency situation) M sat down with the telephone to contemplate with us what can be done and understanding that Splash is almost 4000 miles away it was going to be a case of getting the company back in that built the pond to replace the liner with M's very clear instructions to the pond builders that the stones were not to be reinstalled. 

Boxweld liners are custom made pond liners to the pond owners specifications, they are manufactured from sheet liner and welded together to form the box. With a boxweld liner in place the common folds and flaps from a regular flat sheet liner are eliminated meaning a smooth flat fit to your pond thus losing any  "dead water" areas that muck and debris can get caught up in and causing water quality problems and of course more maintainence for the pond owner.

The filtration of koi and sturgeon ponds is forever changing, every year manufacturers produce a new line of equipment to hopefully enable the pond keeper the best possibilities of keep their fish healthy and the water in which they live as pristine as possible. The most recent options to the fish keepers filtration systems are the variety of mechanical sieves on the market, each varying in its capabilities and suitability of an existing filtration system such as a pump fed system or a gravity fed system there is a mechanical sieve either dedicated to each or can be altered to suit. 

What does a sieve do?

Simply explained a sieve does exactly the same as the one in any households kitchen cupboard. it removes any substance to large to fit through the mesh however when we look at a pond sieve the screen mesh used has holes measured in microns, far smaller than a household sieve as 1 micron is equal to 0.01 millimeters. There are a number of mechanical sieves on the market and size of the screen varies between manufacturer some even come with the option to change the size of the standard screen supplied. On average a screen size will be between 200 to 300 microns depending on model chosen. The three most popular sieves details can be found further down this page. So the whole point of a sieve is to filter out any material larger than the screen size from entering the main filter system. These mechanical sieves have become a key piece of equipment espically to those fish keepers using bead filters as they reduce maintainance time and cleaning of the whole filter system as the sieve removes almost all of the waste from the pond that would normally build up inside the main filter. Previosly many systems encorporated a vortex to do this job however as product manufacturers develop and design the sieve has become probebly the best line of mechanical filtration ever.