Plants for outside Koi Pond

[Cindi]

Hello and welcome!

Koi or goldfish?

Koi

 

[sissy]

my aggie and bert are now over 2 feet long and had 17 babies this year and that is so far the only ones i have caught ,I am sure there are more I have to catch yet .This is bert with the other smaller fish

 

[Mmathis]

@Cindi Please post some pictures of your Zen garden and pond.

 

[JamieB]

Post a picture please, and give us an idea of where you live. I’m in northern Oklahoma, and plants I would pick for here will differ from plants folks in Florida would have success with. I will say, if you put a tree in a planter, the tree may not grow well in the long run. I’m putting in a pond on the east side of my house, and have discovered that the big maple there will forever be a bane, due to the seeds it dumped. I didn’t realize they would have tannins!
Floating plants may be an option, but koi love to eat roots, so you may need a back up location to rotate plants so they can recover. Duck weed is just a snack to them, so they wouldn’t work either.

 

[Cindi]

my aggie and bert are now over 2 feet long and had 17 babies this year and that is so far the only ones i have caught ,I am sure there are more I have to catch yet .This is bert with the other smaller fish View attachment 129883View attachment 129884

I love your cute names mine are Diego and Freida and Fred and Ginger they are the highlight of my day I can sit in my Zen Garden for hours!

 

[Mmathis]

Pictures!

 

[Cindi]

@Cindi Please post some pictures of your Zen garden and pond.

I thought I did ... I probably did something wrong.

 

[Cindi]

I thought I did ... I probably did something wrong.

I made the mosaic table with river rock tile and sea glass

 

[BKHpondcritters]

That's a beautiful little pond & the mosaic table is amazing! But I'm afraid I'm going to have to echo the other posters & agree that your pond is much, much too small for 4 koi. They're small now, and you might be able to enjoy them this summer in there, but they absolutely can & will not survive long-term in such a small pond. I'd hate to see you get attached to them, only to lose them prematurely.

 

[sissy]

aggie and bert got their names from my favorite aunt and uncle.I have fat fantails that love to swim into my hand and get belly rubs and they are olive oil and popeye

 

[JamieB]

The thing about keeping fish in a small pond is that they grow. They will end up producing waste at a rate that the pond cannot sustain a safe balance, and will end up poisoning themselves. May I suggest you start working on a bigger pond, one suitable sized for the amount of waste that will be created? It can be a larger zen pond, big enough for you to sit in, enjoying little fish swimming by, the joy of soothing current, and the lovely fragrance of being surrounded by water lillies? That was my zen the past few years. Well planted, and with a good biological filter, your fish will grow and thrive in ways you never imagined. The small zen pond would work well for some fancy fan tails, fish you can train to eat from your hand.