Koi Pond Depth Conspiracy: Uncovering the Truth and Saving You Time and Money

A lot of people do it for bird protection here. I also think it’s funny you explain a lot as being ok if the koi don’t die. Is that really the level that’s ok for you? If they survive in a bucket is that what we set as good and anything better is a waste.

I watch your videos a lot because ive been using Oase Pond Equipment for over 30 years

I agree, in the past I had a 1000gallon pond 3 ft deep with shelves , living in zone 4 and the koi fish were fine. I rarely fed them. Natural looking pond. No above ground bath tubs for me.

Most of these Carp Fishing ponds hold fish up to 40 lb in 4_5 FT of water

Very Good advice keep it Simple. I do believe so people with ponds really do over complicate things .Weekly 10%water Changes and Filter Cleaning .you Should not have any Problems.

I know a Bloke who had a 6 FT Deep Pound allover ,he had nothing but problems and filled lit in .The Problem was the water was always Green even with a High wattage UV .Because the pond was in a Suntrap .

Great content mate. Can not agree more. I have kept my Koi’s for years in a 350 mm deep pond and they were happy. Now my pond is 1200 mm deep what is still sallow compared to most ponds out there.

1 have a 1500 Gallon Koi Pond with which I,m very happy. I cannot see the Point of going over 4FT Deep

Yeah it's true. Some people think the deeper the pond, the better it is for koi. They might want to make a Mariana Trench Pond for the koi.

I'm a coarse angler and fish loads of carp waters, I could not agree with you more, I see carp thrive all year in the UK in ponds that are 4ft deep max and to be honest when fishing they are not in the deep water that often! love your honest videos.

More worried about predation

Well said I used to work for a well know retailer and they knew nothing about keeping fish

Me and my dad built a pond just over 30 years ago, we've never heated and always shut the filter down for the winter. We never had expensive fish, my farther could never see the point, and the largest about 6" when added. Theyve all grown big and are beautiful , but absolute rubbish to the true koi-ist. They brought my farther a great deal of pleasure and thats the real point, well to me anyway. We've lost fish along the way. But this week we lost one of the first 2 fish we put in 30 years ago.

The pond is over a 1000 (uk )gallons, it is mostly about 4 4½' deep with a small section that goes down a to about 7' in total. In winter, the koi all go down into the deeper section and remain there until the temperature of the water warms up. I assume the koi themselves know whats best and come the winter they go deep and are never in the 4' areas.

Not saying you're wrong or I'm right its just what weve observed them doing for the last 30 years.

Me and my dad have been keeping koi for over 40 years and this lad is more informed that most and he is spot on .on every video I have seen

Most people keeping and dealing Koi use a lot of 'pub talk', l kept them almost 50 years ago, no filter, no fancy stuff whatsoever.

I'm no pond professional but here in Canada we need to get below the frost line. We also have a lot of predators. In my mind 4' is the minimum safe depth. But again "I'm no pro"...

I have a 2ft pond in CA but water temp only gets down to 40 so not a problem. Problem is it heats too fast in summer but thats when I do 10% water changes to keep the temp down to reasonable levels

Ive been saying the same for years.🐟

What do you say to experts about how many gallons of water needed for 1 koi . I was told by a dealer 250 gallons per koi

I don’t recommend putting any shelving in a pond because herons can’t stand in there and eat your buffet

I totally agree with you. But I also think that the more expensive koi are interbreed that much that thay have loss alot of there natural hardiness which causes a lot more problems with the fish.

Omgoodness thank you 🙏

At last someone who speaks sense 👍

Interesting opinions. I was hoping for a more scientific assessment of the Koi needs but money is important.

Thanks!

What a patronising bellend. it's my pond, and I will build it the size and specifications I want to.

I have a question because I am renovating a tiny concrete pond we had so I can have koi in it. The plan was to give the fish depth of 4-5 feet max. as our summers in Ca. are BRUTAL the temps get to around 103-120 F no problem. Also we have raccoons, heron, cats, possums etc.. The winters do get to be around freezing as well however but it hasn't snowed in decades so that is not a worry. My biggest concern was pond size (among other things) what is the smallest size you would go for? We can go only go in an L shape. The size we were considering is 8 ft.L by 4 across aprox in the long part of the L, the short part of the L would be almost 5'6 FT Long by 4 feet across aprox. What would you suggest. It might be possible to dig more in the 5'6 ft part of the pond to a 6 foot + run I just have to see what our landscaper says and if we would hit our sprinkler system! lol That would be no bueno. 😂 I would be hand digging this baby but our soil while hard pan on top is loose and loamy/sandy rocky below so pretty easy to dig. I then wanted to pour the concrete pond right on the soil then add rocks jets, lights, plants etc.. I could also cinderblock it in but I would rather not I was thinking at the most wire meshing. Why Portland concrete? Our water is VERY hard, so it makes our ph puuurfect with concrete and has never been an issue for any of our fish especially since we had foliage, etc.. Another question would be what about possible "stray" electric shocks? I keep hearing about this danger? Do concrete ponds need to be "bonded"? Right now our pond is run off an automatic electric switch and it is an old gravity feed system so it is literally concreted into the waterfall feed by a tube coming out of the ground. We basically we are not removing that just hooking it up to a more powerful filter. If we do that I was told to throw a submersible pump into a skimmer to keep the water free of debris OR set up an outside pump that routes through a UV filter and filtration system then waterfall. Please please tell me if this is salesman hype and overkill or a good choice? Thank you! 😀

well said, all these so called experts probably havent seen carp in a natural enviroment. Even in winter its not uncommon to see carp up in the thermal layers or shallows of a lake

Hi sir I would like to know if koi will eat bacopa or elephant ears plants as I am thinking of placing bacopa and elephant ears in a babies bath basin inside the pond in a shallower area as I thought it would look good

It kind of depends how big your koi are, doesn't it? If you have 3.5 foot koi an 18" deep pond might be a little shallow. If they're under 2 foot 18" is fine depending on the climate. I personally prefer the look of shallow ponds, it keeps the koi up close to the surface.

i would love to be able to save money or be able to use less liner for the size but i also have to acount for when it freezes in the winter which needs to be 3-5 ft in order to allow the fish to stay in.

I. Agree with you ,thank you very much, from Trinidad

Very refreshing watching your channel and views. I’m planning a koi pond that will be a raised wooden structure of 3m x 1.2m x 1.5m deep. Do you think that would be a suitable size? I also want to add a viewing windows on the longest side of 1.2m x 0.9m but I’m unsure of thinkers. I’m thinking 35mm with would be two 12.5mm sheets together. Can you tell me if this sound feasible please?

Well said- I have a koi pond 20 years old only 4 foot deep- with shelves runs on one 10 thousand gallon pump- one 36 watt light - one air pump- my fish are big and in great condition- 👍

If the sides don’t go straight down the heron use the ledges in the pond to just fish your pond

Great information mate

Absolutely great video now subscribed finally someone can voice out on the point of sale person

I agree you are probably right, but I worry, I live in Northern Minnesota (United States) in the winter here it can reach -40 which is the same in Fahrenheit and celcius and regularly dips below -20 which is almost -29 in celcius so pretty darn cold. I have a small pond now and bring my fish into the basement to overwinter. But I would very much like to build a much larger pond deep enough to overwinter the fish outside. Google claims 3 to 5 feet is deep enough that it is unlikely to completely freeze in winter. So 4 should work but I am definitely considering and obviously shelving it to go down to 4 feet and maybe have 1 more small area that goes down 1 more foot in the center just to be on the safe side. I just really would be sad to find the fish had frozen during our long cold winter. And of course I need to be able to keep an area open for oxygen/gas exchange. But I would never dream of digging the whole thing to that depth or even to 4 feet all the way.

Do you really think they give a toss about how much it costs when there spending 30 grand + on one fish,stick to garden ponds. Koi arnt natural there enhanced over many many years. Koi get stressed badly in winter in un heated pond to a point they will just keel over and die.

Folks keep koi for various reasons, same with every other animal.
Some let horses roam and look after themselves, others are treated like babies, receiving the most expensive care, being trained to the hilt to become racing champions........

At last, someone who talks common sense. I've been preaching exactly what you've said in this video to my customers for years! Thank you

This is a really good and insightful video. Thank you for sharing. I only have space for a raised pond. Approx dimensions are 1.8m (L) x 1.2m (W) x .5m (D). Would you say it was sufficient space to keep koi, if so how many?

I thought that it was common logic that koi where extremely hardy fish and that they lived in mud ponds.

Honestly, it does surprise me a lot of the time the money people spend on filtration for koi fish considering the mud ponds they’re grown in.

Let’s be honest though. People want to invest in that filtration because they want to see their fish and the reason they have a huge pond is because they want many koi fish, so this should be part of the consideration

What about during the winter when the water freezes over, will they be ok, and for how long?

Great content and advice, thank you!

Any deeper than 4 feet is a waste of time unless you’re seriously struggling for surface area space. Koi are popular for their ability to grow to an impressive size, their beautiful colourings and patterns and their friendly, calming nature. If your pond is 5/6+ feet deep even your biggest fish will look averaged size, your brightest fish will just look like a colourful splodge at the bottom and you’ll be sat there for ages staring at a big pit of water waiting for them to come up and say hello. The ‘koi cage’ concept referred to in the video is an interesting debate… for your average quality koi, a natural pond often works perfectly and in my opinion looks much better and healthier. However, for competition grade koi (show koi) a plain ‘cage’ is often built with the idea being that the fish are the beauty of the pond and therefore the pond itself is just a big plain canvas. Furthermore, natural ponds attract natural animals such as frogs which jump from stagnant water and then over into your multi thousand pound set up and carry any diseases and bacteria/ parasites with them, potentially killing your expensive show koi. Furthermore, the maintenance of a ‘cage’ is far less than a natural looking pond as plants live, die and decay as they go through their life cycles and cause a lot of mess, especially when you have 10+ hungry koi tugging at their roots all day!
Great video and great advice!
as for the koi dealers, most are sound guys but keep your wits about you and do your research before rushing into purchasing products based off their advice, when I first got into it various different owners of various shops tried to rope me into buying all sorts, some of which was essential, some not so much.
The most important thing is to look at your fish and their behaviour, they’ll tell you all you need to know and more. If they’re hungry it normally means they’re happy, and if they’re not it almost always means they’re not 😂

We have a large backyard pond that I want to transform into a smaller koi pond on a budget. I sure wish I could get some advice on how to do it. There is no access for equipment.