Steve,
I have attached photo's taken today, a little jammed for time so I will go into verbalization later.
Sharon and I have enjoyed showing koi around our neck of the woods (Pacific Northwest Shows) for the past several years. It was at a show I first met Dick B., another show I met Steve C. along with many other koi kichi. So shows are fun, informing at take a lot of time and effort to participate.
The early shows we didn't Qt much other than place our koi in small show tanks to get them ready to show and again a few day after the show to medicate if needed. The idea of dedicating a small body of water as a QT facility took hold about 3 years ago. So when building our new home I simply had my cocrete crew help with both concrete ponds, the large one and smaller indoor QT pond.
The design again was quite simple, a square box with a hopper bottom. What we ended up with, a four inch air dome bottom drain, two inlets toward the bottom and two at the surface controlled by a knife valve. One skimmer pulling water off the top and bingo, the circulation piping was in place. All PVC piping I embedded in our concrete pour, so once again quite simple.
You may notice the large windows on two sides, natural light is very good for our koi so I built a room with a view for them. The size is a 3,800 gallon body of water that is 8 ft X 8 ft X 8.5 ft deep. We have a 1 hp variable rate speed pump, stainless UV light, bead filter and air pump along with our boiler heating system (a second zone with another marine grade exchanger) that handles all water parameters. In addition I also have a continous flow through system of water with 10% change every day.
The beauty of this system, I can change water temperature, flow rate, air induction, medicate all very quickly and easily. You will notice we built an elevated deck so we can view the koi easily along with a jump screen so our koi will not land on the floor if feeling frisky or annoyed. Netting koi in this facility is very easy, plus our human comfort is a huge plus for working or viewing the koi.
We had many great rewards for helping our koi out, a few I'm certain a few years ago we would have lost to the great koi gods in the sky without this facility.
In closing, with KHV lurking around every corner these days, a stable envirnment for QT really helps, kind of like buying an insurance policy for your hobby. This QT pond has easily paid for itself several times over already and its only two years old.
10-30-2007
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