How did you get started in this hobby

[Tom C]

I think it would be great if we could find out how everyone got started in this hobby.

For me it all started with a water turtle we found. We got goldfish for it to eat and it didn't eat them, so we got a few koi to add to the 66 gallon pond. The next day the koi were gone. It was raccoons that got them, so we built a bigger pond and feel in love with this hobby.

Tom

[aquitori]

Well got into the hobby after repetiles...Yeah I said snakes...Had a bunch collected them like I collect koi now....What does that have to do with me starting koi? Dunno, maybe the aquarium aspect of it....Built my first pond in 91' didn't get into koi until 97'....First dealer was Tom Lai, then Kevin...both great guys to learn from....I have been hooked ever since.

[Rich L]

I was nearing retirement and looking for an activity that would bring in a little side money.

HAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

[kingkong]

Always has been fish, to start sailfin molly then Cichlids, oscars, discus, Africans. Then Atlantic marine salt water fish, No live coral, that was just starting. Then one day I was told to go look at a pond on Matheson Drive. It had gin clear water in a tropical setting with a active water fall. And what are those? I had never seen anything like this before. Those are koi? I had no idea there could be anything like this. This had it all! Then as time passed, by chance I called Genki Koi. A polite voice answered the phone and said "Hi, my name is Kevin and koi is my passion". It all took shape from that point on.

[andrewn15]

Start in the early 80's with a 2 gal goldfish bowl, turned into full blown 300 gal quarium with cichlid, arowana and eventually indoor discuss breeding succssfull for a while til having my first child, had to make room for the kid so I had to move my hbby outdoor and pond was a natural extension of that, had koi for about 6-7 years (water garden type) did not get serious about that til this year, 3000 + gal pond and 900 gal QT, Still learning how to select koi and koi name.

[dick benbow]

I had all kinds of tropical fish as a child, so was used to be a water keeper.

After I came back from Japan and bought our first house, I started on my japanese garden.



at almost completion decided to design a pond and incorporate. that fall went to a garden store bought two hi utsuri types at 6 inches and stuck in a 29 gal aquarium. was so glad to have a pond to put them in that spring. What a nightmare. 50 % water changes every night afterwork. The got so they couldn't turn around inside the tank! Lol. That was back in the day when there were no books available on koi and hard to find any koi period. For our best ones we went to hawaii.


I remember the biggest turning point in my life was telling my wife i wanted just one show koi! (Ha! Now with Tokoname bonsai show pots I want just a few (ha!)

[Bill D]

We purchased a new home with a large backyard (large for So. Calif. anyway) many years ago. The front yard was landscaped, however the back was not. The yard had steeply sloped hills on two side, and so we decided to cut them back, and build retaining walls. Just before we started, we thought... how nice it may be to have a small waterfall spilling down the hill. Hmmm... later, we figured why not have it spill into a small pond? We did do some rudimentary research, and talked with a "pond builder"... ughhh! Ended up with an undergravel filter system on one end of the pond, which we stocked with water lillies and goldfish. The pond worked reasonable well (cleaning that gravel bed was a nightmare however), untill we "discovered" koi. We were hooked immediatly, and after joining one of the lcoal koi clubs, quickly came to the realization that our pond was woefully inadequate for keeping koi. Anyway, I guess you could say that we got started because we wanted a waterfall. Sounds so lame in retrospect!

[Regenmeneer]

From before I was born, my father had an aquarium. I grew up with it, and from about 3 years of age, I had my own aquarium in my bedroom. Sometimes I fell asleep against it

My grandmother liked goldfish as well, so when I was 6 years old, she let me dig a hole in her garden and put in a bowl used for washing clothes. We did put in some waterplants and goldfish.

When we moved to another house, my father made me a bigger aquarium, and I started breeding fish, such as guppy, ciclids, betta splendens, goerami, and finally fancy goldfish as well. I had a salt water aquarium for a while as well.

After I moved to Houston, Tx in 1988, my parents and sister visited me. I took them on a trip around Texas, and visited the Japanese Garden in the Forth Woth Botanical Garden. It was there I saw koi for the first time, and was fascinated by all those koi coming up when food was thrown in.

Some years later, when I had returned to the Netherlands, I built a small pond for mothers day. Then one day in the spring of 1994, I was called by my girlfriend, who told me she had seen the fish I had told her about. I went over and had a look, and bought 6 small koi for about $2 each. It didn't take long before I bought my first japanese koi, donated the first 6 koi to an aquantance of my parents, and built a 1000 gallon pond. I was hooked.

After moving to the house where I live right now, I built a 50 ton pond, and a oriëntal/japanese stile garden. Last year I built a 15 ton quarantine pond where I keep new and sick fish, but also my entire collection during winter months.

Regenmeneer

[luke frisbee]

While floating in my amniotic fluid i tested for Ph and Nitrites and determined I could have a modest collection in there with me. No truly big koi, and nothing suitable to Show as there was very limited sunlight....but I had no way of buying any koi, i waited ....One day I knew I would have a Koi Pond.

[Bern]

My Dad kept goldfish and belonged to an Aquarist club. We had a pond in the garden that was fenced off to keep me out. Dad died when I was four and sometime after that the pond became mine. For my 7th birthday my brother paid my dues and made me a meber of the Aquarist club. Most of the members knew my Dad and I sort of become the clubs mascot. I learned a lot about fish keeping from them, as well as breeding and showing.

About the time I was 16/17 I bought another book on goldfish, it was an American publication as most were in those days. In it was a picture of some fish, the caption was "A riot of colour aren't they?" The picture was of Koi, sometime in the year after that (1969) I bought my first koi.

They grew (and grew!), they even bred. Even though my goldfish ponds were pretty sophisticated for the time (they had filters) I realised I had problems. I contacted the then fledgling BKKS and was shown pics of how big they could grow. I should have realised, as I knew what Carp were capable of but somehow I had it in mind that Koi were miniatures. So in 1976 or thereabouts I gave up. I returned to the fold in 1985 when I moved into a house with a sufficiently large garden to have a koi pond.

Damn Yanks - they're to blame for everything!
rgds Bern.