Roger & Tracey's Pond

Our second pond visit of the year for the EYKS was Roger & Tracey's pond and garden.

Roger & Tracy's garden had a large lawned area surrounded by some lovely flowers,shrubs and trees.The pond is an elongated figure of eight shape containing 5000 gallons and is five and a half feet deep. A great feature of the pond was the veiwing window, these are now a very popular addition to ponds allowing you to see the koi from all angles.Good for spotting problems such as raised scales or ulcers before they really take hold. But I bet not many windows were installed while the fish were still in the pond as Roger sucessfully managed to do .

Most of the koi in the pond would be classed as large, being around the 24inch mark and they were all very good feeders, fed by the Cloverleaf auto feeder throughout the day and in addition by both Roger & Tracey whenever they could.

As with all large ponds you also need a large filtration system to keep the pond in tip top condition and this pond certainly had that. Gravity fed to Rogers home made filter, based on a well known filter unit. This was easily big enough to handle the 5,000 gallons alone. Water from this filter returned to the pond via one of the many returns.

Further filtration was provided through the home made trickle tower and a fluidised bed filter.

The whole pond system is powered by Grundfos water pumps and returned back to the pond via a TMC 55 Watt U.V and an electric heating unit. Aeration for both the filters and pond was through a number of Secoh 40 airpumps. All this making for a very impressive filtration system which after seeing the quality of both the water and the koi works amazingly.

Another great night was had by the EYKS, thanks to Roger & Tracey for allowing us to see their pond.

The Great Outdoor's

After what has been the harshest winter for many years, some koi keepers around the East Yorkshire area were certainly pushed to their limits with instances involving frozen  pipework, pond leaks, pond walls collapsing and even occurrences of frozen koi!

With that in mind it gives me great pleasure to be able to write about the East Yorkshire Koi Societies first outdoor pond visit of the year at Lee's pond.

After week's of drought like weather this Spring across Britain our first get together happened to be the Sunday morning of the only down pour we have had in May. Whilst waiting for the phone call to tell me that the visit had been called off due to the rain, the sun burst into life and the visit was on.

I arrived to find a good showing of club members already there, quite a few new faces of new members to the Society, which was nice to see as well as the usual suspects. After a few introductions it was time to explore. Lee's garden was surrounded by some very nice Japanese themed plants, shrubs, Acer's and Bamboo's.It is a real sun trap and conditions were obviously favourable for the plants as many were very large specimens then it was time to look at the pond itself.

Informal in shape the pond fit's into the space available perfectly. It's raised and covered by a wooden pergola to provide shade and protection from the elements for the fish. The pond is almost five feet deep and contains 3500 gallons giving plenty of room for the fish . The first thing to draw the eye was the pond viewing window which was set in the pond wall, this allowed us to see the true size of some of the pond's inhabitants, mainly koi of varying sizes and varieties,( including Sanke, Kohaku, Goromo and Ochiba Shigure) but also a number of very large common carp around 20inches in size.

Next was the fully enclosed filter area containing all the gadgets needed to keep the Koi happy whilst allowing Lee the ability to carry out any maintenance necessary whatever the weather . The  main pond filtration is via an aerated bottom drain attached to a Nexus Eazy 200 filter with the system being powered by a Sequence pump before returning back to the pond through an in line TMC 55 watt UV. This provided ample filtration taking into account future growth of the koi. Lee also had a custom made in wall skimmer which at the time of our visit was not running because .....you guessed it winter damage, (which was on his to do list ) returning back to the pond via a pond heating system.

The visit was enjoyed by all the East Yorkshire Koi Society member's and our thanks go out to Lee and his family for the kind invitation and hospitality shown to us....... A truly great way to start the koi season.

A19 Koi & POnd Supplies - BBQ 3 July

Paul from A19 Koi & Pond Supplies has just provided me with details of a charity BBQ they're holding.

The chaity BBQ is taking place on Sunday 3rd July to raise money for prostate cancer research, a charity which is very close to their hearts. It promises to be a great event with fantastic tombola prizes donated by Evolution Aqua, Oase, Kusuri, NT Labs and many more!

As well as the BBQ and tombola, they will be running two Koi treatment demonstrations which will be run by Mr John Drury, who has over 65 years of fish keeping experience. Some of you may remember John from D Koi when it was originally at Stockton on the Forest? The aim of these seminars is to demonstrate how to anaesthetise, treat wounds & ulcers, administer antibiotics, as well as parasite identification. The demonstrations are scheduled for 12.00 and 2.00pm.

I'm sure you'll agree it's a worthy cause and it would be great to see as many members from the EYKS supporting Paul, Debbie and John from A19 Koi whilst helping raise money for their chosen charity.