you should stop feeding at 10c koi will fast throughout the winter and if the do eat it will be from the algae on the sides of the pond , by feeding to November you risk causing your koi when the temperature goes up again at the moment your pond has nothing in the way of helpful bacteria your ammonia will sky rocket whilst the bacteria recolonates the filters and pond.
You must sart with wheat germ and garlic small amounts at first only when your temperature is stable above 10c for a number of weeks this way in future you shouldnt have any problems .
Did you clean your filters prior to the end of Autumn and remove any dead leaves detritus etc from the bottom of your pond , which all koi keepers do in the UK its good husbandry of your pond and koi .
Dave
Thanks Dave, yes i do know those rules, but you probably have colder temperatures then we 're here: I'm in northern part of New Jersey and in November we still for the most part of the month have the water temperature staying above 10C. our September here is still a summer month, and we have water temperature staying 20 C and above constantly, in October it starts to drop down to 15-17 c. And usually the water temperature in November stays around 55-52 F (13 to 11 C) that's why our feeding period here usually starts from mid March to end November. and i do feed them spring-fall wheatgerm diet in temperature below 17 C and when the water goes to 50 F and below i stop feeding. I always clean the bottom of my pond constantly, in the summer and in the fall, so the bottom is pretty clean. Got Pondvac a few years ago, so i vacuum the bottom of the pond every 2-3 weeks. And I always get all the leaves out after leaf fall finishes. I keep it covered with the net during leaf fall to prevent too many leafs falling in. I did learn all this rules years ago when started my first pond. I think my problem in the spring for a past couple years have been from long cooler spring temperatures last 2 years: we had the temperatures have been warm to feed fish, but not warm enough for filters to mature after it's being off in the winter. The water temperature have been staying in 15-17 C for several weeks, so fish is eating at this temperatures but for the new not establish filer the temperature have to stay 20 C and above for a few weeks in order for bacteria to start rapidly growing, so it did create a problem with ammonia. The only way i knew how to keep fish safe from it is constantly adding ammonia locking/removing products. I have to do it for over a month till the temperature finally warmed up and filters started to work. That prompted me to think of the way to bypass all waterfalls and try to leave filter running all winter and hope that it would eliminate the problem in the spring. Now i'm yet to determine if it will help.
I like your videos Collen, looks nice. thanks for sharing. The last video you made on Jan 29, i've noticed that you also have quite a bit string algae on your walls. I have tremendous problem with it last spring (my pump and filter wasn't running last winter) And when i restarted it in the spring I tried to pull it off the walls best i could but it was so much of it so it still clogged up all my prefilter baskets and worst of all, filter media, that i had to open the bead filter and wash of the media manually. It was a lot of work. This year i do have it growing longer on the walls, but seems to be not as long as last year. I put this winter 4 barley bales and also hoping that running water would help. Still not sure if it would create a problem. occasionally when water warms up I see the fish is nibbling on the algae, but it will be about a month to 5 weeks before they actively will start eating it, so it may grow longer and create a problem for the filter. I also made another prefitler basket with much smaller holes then the original one has in the pond. Just put it on the top of original one hoping to catch more of this string gook before it will enter a filter. In one of the photos you see that home made prefilter basket i made. I'm thinking to get one of those mechanical algae removing tools:
http://www.thepondoutlet.com/home/tpo/smartlist_285/algae_removal.html thinking that the Algae witch looks best:
http://www.thepondoutlet.com/home/tpo/page_2812_285/algae control, pond maintenance Any ideas or suggestions of how to fight this string algae in the winter? In the summer string algae never a problem, as fish eat it all, and for the floating kind my 2 UV lights are doing good job to keep water clear. Also i have few Lilly plants (you can see on the picture from this summer) that i think also help with algae. Actually i'm only plug in UV lights probably have a time; 2 weeks on 10 days-2 weeks off, and it seems to work fine. I'm including some photos of my fish i took today. So far they're doing ok, no sleeping sickness koi this winter, as i had 2 years ago. in addition to koi I have 2 baby red cap orandas and accidental 5 baby gold fish/comets, i'm not actually sure what they are because it was accidental breeding one of my orandas with 2 shibunkins i had. I didn't even know that they can mix, but last summer i noticed that 2 of my male shibunkins were chasing pregnant oranga, and i made a mistake by allowing it to happen, instead of removing Oranda from the pond, and in result shibunkins pin poor slow Oranda between lilly pot, and stressed it out so much, so i couldn't even save it and it eventually died couple weeks later. I was so upset and gave the shibunkins away, as i really like orandas and didn't want for anything to happen to them in a future. Koi really doesn't bother them, but the gold fish would kill them if they're pregnant. But a few weeks later i discover 5 baby gold fish/comets. They look like gold fish 2 red ones and 2 white with red, but i know they're mixture of shibunkings and poor deceased oranda. Actually i see all 5 those gold fish and 2 orandas i have now swimming almost all the times, nibbling on the algae, like cold water doesn't even matter for them. I'll definitely will give all 5 gold fish away in the spring, so i'll only stick with koi and 2 oranges.
Thanks again for all the tips and suggestions,
Kira
