Stan: Am 100% with MR. Benbow
Stan:
Once again all I can say is "Ditto" to Dicks post....Having said that, I'm like you, I like the "au natural" look of a waterfall and streams, have um on our Japanese Garden pond...
When I first installed it, I lined the stream beds with 2" flat river rocks, looked great, but after only a week they collected too much fine crud...took um out and went with just the concrete beds, now clean as a whistle, no creepy crawlies...algae makes them look natural...
A seasoned hobbyst posted a thread on the NI board awhile back explaining that his water quality looked great, but then the koi started doing the back stroke...problem, debris on the bottom of his catchment basins which hadn't been cleaned in some time started to ferment adding unseen toxins to water...:(
Aloha! Mike
erwinsan and others ~ There is a perfect System
It's natures, but it ain't cheap...
There are a number of watercress farms on the shores of Pearl Harbor fed by artesian wells. In the 60’s, when I started this hobby, I visited one of the farms where the owner built his house so that a deck was over his well…
The first paddock next to his house was dedicated to koi…it was only 18"-2’ deep but contained the biggest, most beautiful koi I had ever seen…. Best part was the water was crystal clear and the maintenance was Zero, because this was a flow through system…I live in the area and our water, the same that feeds the wells is: 7.5 pH, with a hardness of 3 dH and zero contaminants… Sing along with me, Heaven, I'm in Heaven...:p
The farmer fed his koi, dog food, because it made um grow big fast (remember this was the ‘60s)… Each morning and evening, he’d throw handfuls of the doggie chow into the pond, the koi would eat their fill and the left overs would flow into the adjacent paddies along with all the koi waste as free fertilizer for the cress…
I’ve always dreamt of buying property in the area, but never followed through, stupid me!…
To make matters worse, the @#$*%^ power company condemned his land using a crazy law of eminent domain (they needed the land for the good of the people) forced him to sell, capped the well, filled in the ponds and built a storage yard and parking lot…. As the song says "they sold paradise and put up a parking lot" Grrrrrrrr!:mad:
Aloha! PO’d