koi pond design

koi pond design

Backyard Ponds > Koi Pond Design

Koi Pond Design Tricks

Proper koi pond design involves a few little known tricks. Good to know. Especially for your first koi pond design. (Trust me there will be others.)

How to Go
About Designing a
Backyard Pond

• Walls
Dig nearly vertical walls. Yes I know you might want a ledge or two for water plants. Okay. Just realize any such ledge makes for a perfect spot for predators to ambush your fish. Straight walls also give you more water volume.

• Bottom Drains
If you've ever had to hand clean the muck that accumulates on the bottom of a pond you'll know why having one or more bottom drains is important.

Here's How to Have the Fish Pond or Water Garden You've Always Dreamed of!

• Bottom
To make best use of those bottom drains you want to design the bottom of your pond to slope towards the drains. You also want the bottom to slope away from any water falls.

• Right Size
A good starter pond comes in at 500 gallons or so. When it comes to koi pond design bigger really is better. Bigger ponds mean you can keep more koi.

Three More Koi Pond Design Think Abouts

• Proper Depth
Deeper is better than wider. Especially if you live where it freezes and plan to overwinter you fish in their pond. You'll need at least 36 inches of depth to give your koi room to wait out winter.

• BioFilters
Design in your bio filter. You must have some way to remove toxic ammonia from the water. The more fish the more important this is.

• Skimmer
You'll want a surface skimmer to remove surface debris. It can also work as a pre-filter for your pump in order to minimize clogging. Running that water into a mechanical filter.

Koi Pond Design