When we bought our house, it was brand new. We had .75 acres and about half of that was the pie shaped back yard. In 2002, my husband began to map out a free-form outline for a future pond, which he began digging out during the summer and fall 2001. We estimate it to be about 5,000 gallons. We didn’t have one tree or shrub in our entire yard. We had no experience with ponds – knew nothing about filtration, liners, skimmers, etc. We figured it out all on our own.
Later we added more plants. The only fish that reproduced were the goldfish. Goldfish and Koi, essentially both carps, are able to breed, but their offspring are rather muddy looking and sterile. We ended up giving away as many of these fish as we could.
In 2003 or 2004 we put stone from our deck to the ponds edge, so that we could have a patio.
Most of the leylands shown here came down during the 2010 blizzard
Once we put the net up, we also bought a lot of water hyacynths and parrots feather. That year, the vegetation just went wild. We could hardly see our fish, but the water was very clear. And something else happened, we started seeing babies! Breeding koi is difficult because they tend to eat their own roe. The combination of the net, lots of roots floating on the surface and vegetation in the pond for roe to attach, plus perhaps the addition of OhNo and Choucho (Japanese for butterfly)provided an ideal habitat to make koi babies. More than a dozen survived. We’ve given a lot away, but kept eight to enjoy. We see many of the characteristics of our original koi in this second generation. One in particular, we dubbed Rising Sun, for his nice round orange spot on the top of his head. I also like the name because it is one of my favorite George Harrison songs. He’s very shy and quick and its hard to get a picture of him.
The pond net makes getting nice photographs difficult In the spring, the net catches various seed pods and leaves, and it can get kind of junky. We’ve got to figure out a way to vacuum this debris off. But it is necessary and acceptable if it means our koi are safe!
We changed the water in the pond this year (startling a mother mallard that nested at the pond’s edge and pump) and I made my husband take out most of the plants that had overgrown their pots, and which had also accepted many weeds. He removed them under duress, but we needed a fresh look. So we launched this spring with one pickerel plant, and plan to get some more. We need the plant life to fix the nitrogen and help shade the pond. Algae is a problem, though the fish don’t mind it.