Golden Rules Of Koi Keeping and Some Personal Water Gardening Observations
Questions posed to Peter May. Peter lives in Blagdon, North Somerset
HOW DID YOU GET INTO KOI?
I didn't, or at least I didn't intend to. It was more a case of Koi getting into me. After all, when I first started building water gardens for a living the advice from certain individuals who had dealt in fish most of their business careers was avoid Koi and Koi fanatics at all costs on the basis that anyone that is going to spend that much money on a fish must be nuts and dealing with anyone that nutty is bound to create problems. Well, they were difficult to spot, particularly in the early stages of their addiction. It took me nearly 20years to spot that glint in the eye of the latent Koi nut. I cant remember the number of times I have been inveigled into building a water garden only to be contacted 6 months later with a call to say how nice it looked but that they could not get the water clear. Id arrive on the scene to ponder the murky mire and perhaps spot a telltale dorsal break the surface and it wasn't a killer whale on the prowl!
you've got some Koi, I see!
Oh yes, just a few. didn't we tell you?
Then would begin the long expensive process of amelioration. Trying to adapt the water garden to the presence of these relative leviathans. It always seemed that the more filtration, u/vs and the all the other gubbins and gizmos that emerged onto the market over the burgeoning period for the industry the 80s and 90s, the more the fish seemed out grow the technology and their environment.
The upshot has been that I know the whys, wherefores and weaknesses of every darned fishy product on the market and North Somerset have some pretty molly coddled Koi living in some pretty exclusive pads as a result. But as I said, it wasn't my choice. They came to me with the problems and I went on a learning curve to sort them out. It seems my life has always been falling into things Ive done my best to avoid. Being a gardener was the last thing I wanted to be. When I was a boy at boarding school, gardening was something you had to do on Saturday and Sunday afternoons as punishment for minor misdemeanours like talking after lights out. Now Ive been doing gardening for the last 30 years. I must have sort of guilt complex or something.
FAVOURITE KOI:
Any fish called JAWS or MOBY . Well your favourite Koi have to be the ones you have nursed tiddlers to titanics over time, and everyone seems to have a JAWS, or at least my clients have. Size is the only thing they have in common though, certainly in the case of Mr and Mrs Mills's orange Aka Hijaro and Mrs Hembrows paler fatter Ogon.
Mrs Pearces Moby (as in the great white whale of the tale Moby Dick) I only know by reputation, like the Lochness monster it only emerges from the stygian depths for the privileged few. But I understand from its description that it is a Tancho Kohaku, white with a little red splodge on its head ( the blood of Captain Ahab).
But if you asked me to choose a fish on purely aesthetic appeal, like a model on a catwalk, then the Kinginrin Showa has got everything going for it for me. Look on the last page of The Interpet Encyclopaedia of Koi. Say no more.
Now WHAT ARE YOUR TWO GOLDEN RULES OF KOI KEEPING
Simple:
1.don't overfeed. Only as much as the fish will eat in a minute. or two at a stretch. Net off any uneaten food.
2. Don't overstock. Allow only 2 inches of fish per square foot of surface area. That translates as less than half a metre per square metre of surface area. Trying to get a novice Koi keeper to do that before he or she learns the consequences is working against the rules of human nature.