Which Koi Varieties and Colors Are Best? A Complete Guide to Koi Keeping Methods

 

　　Food:Koi are omnivores; they can eat insects such as crickets and earthworms, and vegetarian foods such as bread crumbs and steamed buns are no problem either. In short, they will basically eat whatever you eat, so keeping koi for me is like keeping a dog; they can even eat the leftover corn I give them. If you feed them a lot, you need to change the water frequently; the more you feed, the worse the water quality. How much feed is actually appropriate for one fish? It is hard to say. The general standard is that if the koi finish the food quickly after you feed them, you should feed a little more. If the koi have not finished eating within 5 minutes, that means you have fed them quite a lot.

　　Maintaining water quality: Koi do not have high requirements for water quality. The 6 koi I keep are more than 20 cm long, and they produce a lot of waste every day, so I bought a filter costing a few dozen yuan (running 24 hours a day), which oxygenates the water while filtering it. Generally, the electricity consumed each day is under 1 kWh. The water change frequency is once a week, changing one third to one half of the water each time. Do not change too much water at once, as this will destabilize the ecosystem in the fish tank and easily make the koi uncomfortable. Another issue to note is not to let oil contaminate the tank, otherwise it can easily cause oxygen deprivation and suffocation.

　　Cleaning the fish tank:If you buy a fully automatic fish tank with a built-in cleaning system, changing the filter cotton or cleaning it once every half a month is enough. But koi actually do not need such complex equipment, so the fish tank easily grows green algae. The way to prevent green algae is to clean the fish tank often. When cleaning the fish tank, take all the fish out and keep half of the water rather than pouring it away, then pour it back after cleaning the tank. If you do not have time to clean the fish tank often, you can put the fish tank in a cool place, avoid direct sunlight, and apply wallpaper to the places with more light.

　　Do not plant aquatic plants: These aquatic plants are very expensive now, and if you keep koi, the aquatic plants will soon be eaten, so the loss outweighs the gain. Moreover, the leftover debris is very likely to pollute the water quality. My method is to grow aquatic plants in a separate basin and regularly put aquatic plants into the fish tank to supplement nutrition.

　　Controlling water temperature:As mentioned above, koi can endure the cold winter, though they are less active in winter. If the weather is especially cold, pay attention to providing some nutritious fish feed to supplement calories. If the weather is especially hot, feed less food, clean the fish tank more, and change the water more. When changing the water, pay attention to the water temperature. If koi are suddenly put into cold water, they will find it hard to adapt, so put the water in a basin to cool for a while, and pour it into the tank only when the water temperature is about the same as the air temperature.