Will you be bringing in your koi for the winter?

[keokoi]

With the weather the way is was last year with late rainfalls and such. Will you be bringing in your koi for the winter?

[jnorth]

Some of them...but I haven't figured out which ones yet.

[MikeM]

Uh, from sunny Florida where pond temps are still hovering at 80F .....no.

[redhotkoi]

Keep rubbing it in!!!!!!!!

It's been raining all weak air temp is around 60°

I haven't work on my pond since last wednesday.


Andy

[Fishbreeder]

We bring ourselves in, the koi stay outside in the mud.

Actually, what we do each winter is to wrap the pole barn that is our fish house up in plastic so as to keep the wind off. We have an old wood stove in there to sit by and warm chilled hands that have been in the cold water.

Water temps may go as low as 40 degrees F, but seldom for long. Usually the temp hovers around 50 or so all winter.

IN about the last twenty or so years we've found "wild ice" (ice out of doors and not in a gin and tonic) a few times, but it is rare.

About every ten to fifteen years or so we get a killer freeze that kills fish like you would not beleive. In 1983, after Hurricane Alicia hit that summer it got down to 11 degrees here. Most of the fish around here died, especially things like shad, sunfish, and bass in freshwater, almost all the fish in the bays and along the beachfront died.

We had two hurricanes this year, both bigger than Alicia, I'm thinking we might see another one of those killer freezes this winter.

When it gets so cold here they shut down all the power plants as they are not designed to operate in such extreme cold, leaving us folks living here quite literally "out in the cold."

Then when the thaw comes, also comes a big flood from all the broken plumbing.

Hopefully not this winter.

Brett

[gregbickal]

I have been for the last 5 year (small pond in the basement). I'm working feverishly to get my new koi house/greenhouse completed. It will have a 8,000 gallon main pond for my breeding stock, and a couple 1,000 gallon ponds for my Tosai. The ponds will be rubber lined.

Ive only got 3 or 4 more weeks before we start having ice outside, so ive got to boogie. Weatherman says it will be a warm winter, but what does he know.... Zone 4b.

Please dont laugh at my buldged out concrete wall... One of the forms blew on us while we were pouring. Hey, extra strong now

[Sanke56]

Yes I have most of mine in already they sure grew well this year. A few problems though. They have increased in biomass and my indoor ponds look smalll now. We have already had a bit of ice on the water. This is the earliest I have ever brought them in. I would love to live in an area where they could grow outside all year long don't like the idea of hurricanes though. Maybe -40C isn't too bad!

[dick benbow]

Greg,
On your roof....skylights? Worred about your inside lighting? I built something like you and put grow light flo lights in. Red deteriorates so fast will make your head spin. Some day will replace everything with thick acrylic on walls and roof so all the natural light can get in. reason why the japanese build the way they do!

[kevan]

HI Dick,

your comment about the red deteriating without natural light got my attention,
i have a section that is closed in withought my natural daylight and the fish go from red to orange very quickly, i too blamed the lack of naural light for this but now im not so sure...why?

well when the koi are in there the temps are usally quite a bit higher and the fish grow quite a bit faster, so perhaps the fading is just the red stretching, the koi also feature the darker red slit through the scale indicating the true colour of the fish when the fish growth slows down, i thought that if it was a genuine deteriation of the red then the dark red slit that you see on growing koi would not be there?

however its interesting to note that i had some fry where the red was so faded it was actually dissapearing and when put outside the red became stong again withing a few weeks?

so perhaps the colour does indeed fade and i need a more controlled setup to test the theory. any other experences of colour fading relating to natural light?

kevan.

[KingKoi]

I too bring mine in for the winter , right now I have 3 winter temp ponds indoors , 1/2 of the koi are in few 2 weeks now the other 1/2 will be coming in very shortly as soon as the rainy weather stops it's been raining everyday /night for a week stright