January
This photograph was taken at Ray Abel's Mud Pond Harvest in November. Although I'm not a huge Tancho Kohaku fan myself, who could say no to this fish? You can see a video of the 2005 harvest |
February
This picture is of Merle's pond. It is populated by goldfish and although it has a bottom drain, there is a low turnover
rate. Merle only keeps goldfish which produce quite rapidly mainly due to he abundance of plants. The pond is 1500 gallons.
You can see more of her pond here |
March
This picture was taken at the Koi Health Management Course I attended in Georgia, February 2006. A large tumour
has been removed from this yamabuki ogon and can be seen on the right. I have uploaded a video I shot of some of the
lectures which were quite interesting. See it here
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April
This picture clearly illustrates the installation of a gravity fed filter system on a pond that has already been constructed
A liner connector is installed on the pond liner and flex hose is then run to a filter system. In this case, inexpensive 55 gallon drums
are utilized and connected with bulkheads. A shut off valve is installed close to the pond in order to isolate the filter system
This setup dramatically improves water quality and reduces maintenance because the pump is now longer located in the pond |
May
This picture is of a Nissai Yamatoniski bred by Ushizo (Shinoda Koi Farm). It has a very interesting head pattern and of course being a doitsu, has strikingly clean kiwa. This fish is about 14 inches and currently available for viewing at our shop
see more fish for sale
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June
The first pond build of the season is now complete. Another classic rebuild, the pond was made larger and a bottom drain was installed. You can see the new vortex in the top middle of the frame.
Left inset picture shows the pond before we started.
The client didn't like the contrived step waterfall and wanted a drop style falls.
The right inset picture shows that some of the excavation has progressed. The pond is now over 5 feet deep and we hope to avoid the fish loss that occured last Winter with the original 2.5 feet deep pond
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July
This waterfall was rebuilt by Clarke Koi last Summer. I revisted it a couple of weeks ago and snapped this photo.
Plants are starting to grow in but it will still take some more time to look fully mature. Of course during the rebuild
we installed a bottom drain and external filter. To see a photo of what this pond looked like before we started, click here
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August
This pond was another classic rebuild which we performed in 2004. See build pics here and portfolio pictures here. The landscaping is really shaping up and the water lettuce and hyacinths are doing exceptionally well this year. The fish introduced last year survived the winter and are growing well |
September
As the Fall is upon us, my thoughts turn to Virginia. Hopefully Clarke and I will be heading down there again once again to view the koi harvest at Ray Abel's place. See some pics here, and a video of the event here. With my new camera, I hope to get some great shots. Note the dramatic body shape difference between the 2 fish on the right |
October
I'm currently assisting 3 people build their dream ponds. Vincent (pictured above) is very passionate and deteremined to acheive his goal despite his busy schedule. We begun back in June when we installed the concrete collar. I think I got home at 10 pm that evening - it was a long day. We are now entering the final stages and the exciting moment - when you start up the system for the first time. The pond has a bottom drain, skimmer, 2 jets, large vortex and a rotating media filter. We still chuckle at the offer by a landscaper to build his pond in only 1 day for 7K. As I always say, pond construction is a process |
November
This picture illustrates a typical 3 chamber gravity fed system. The green vortex is the first chamber and will trap most of the debris
coming from the bottom drain. The next chamber is a rotating media chamber which will house about 5 cubic feet of kaldnes. Kaldnes media is a great substrate because it is so good at ammonia conversion. The last chamber is a polishing chamber featuring reticulated foam. Coming out of the last chamber is the feed to a dolphin pump whichs runs to a tetra UV and then to dual outputs. 1 returns to the pond, the other to waste (the plumbing is not complete in this photo) |
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