Top tips on caring for koi fish
Receive a FREE 10-week koi fish survival guideThe first 10 weeks are the MOST IMPORTANT to ensure Enter your details below now and we'll start sending you this
*your name and email address will not be sold, shared or disclosed to anyone. We respect your privacy* |
People from all walks of life, with yards big and small, keep koi fish in their ponds. If you’re thinking of installing a pond on your property, there’s a lot of planning that will go into this process. Believe it or not, the actual construction of the pond is the easy part – even if you choose to lay brick instead of using a liner. With this work, you can go at your own pace, being meticulous with the construction; but with koi, the care for these fish may be tedious work, especially when you first start out.
Luckily, there are millions of koi owners on the planet who, sometimes, lend their expertise and offer up tips on how to care for these beautiful Japanese fish.
Koi are omnivorous and will eat meats and vegetables with no problem. Basically, they will eat whatever you give them, especially after they know you and gather around you for feeding time, so you have to be careful of what you feed them and when you feed them. Koi will also eat underwater foliage and all types of insects and worms if they make their way to the pond.
With this information, the first tip is to child-proof your environment, per se. Make sure you have no fertilizer run-off or any types of harmful plants growing around the pond. If it makes its way into the pond, the koi are going to ingest it in one form or another. You want to keep the pond skimmed of debris and you definitely want to keep garbage out of it.
The second tip is another one of those common sense rules of thumb that come with being a responsible pet owner. It’s your job to make sure that the koi are receiving a balanced diet. You can purchase koi pellets with a range of benefits. Simply talk to the person at the store you’re purchasing the pellets from. If you’re buying them online, read some user reviews. Make sure the pellets have the right nutritional balance before giving them to your koi.
As your koi feed, they will come to the top of the water. This is where tip number-three comes in: always make sure they’re healthy. You can usually tell if they’re having any problems by the color of their skin. Koi should always be bright and vibrant. If they’re not, then it’s a sure sign that you need to change their diet. Try mixing it up some and give more protein or more vitamins to your fish.
Koi fish live in water temperatures of 60 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit. If your water is within that range, then it’s best to feed them at least twice daily. If your water is between 60 and 50 degrees, you want to cut that feeding schedule down to one time per day. If it’s anywhere below 50 degrees, you don’t want to feed them at all. Instead, the koi’s digestive system slows to a halt and they will eat only the algae. If you keep feeding the koi in cold weather, food will go bad in their stomachs and cause illness.
It’s tedious at first, but once you get the first schedule going, have a clean pond and adhere to feeding times and diet foods, the process will be easy.
