Koi Pond Tips From Lake Management Inc. – Fish Feeding & Maintaining Your Pond Year Round
Just like human beings your koi fish need to be fed regularly with the right diet in order to grow healthy and keep a sustainable ecosystem in your pond. Koi should be fed 1-3x per week and with high quality food in order to stay healthy, vibrant, and happy – while not causing your filtration and pumps to work overtime. Many of our customers feed their fish daily and this causes excess waste buildup throughout the water feature – we encourage only a few times per week, if that.
Own a commercial or residential pond? Our pond maintenance plans are based on your water feature and perfect for any size pond, stream, or lake – Request a quote from a company with over 40 years. Lake Management Inc. is OC’s best pond service – if you need a quote, or advice with managing your pond. Lake Management started as an Orange County pond maintenance company and has since taken on Riverside, and parts of Los Angeles due to an increase in demand.
Some super-cool foods for fish (some sort of crowd / kid pleasers that won’t result in large amounts of waste) are using fruits like grapefruit, oranges, and similar. Some of our clients have strings with clamps on the end and attach the fruit slices accordingly – the fish will then come to the edge of the water to feed. Kids always love this.
Maintaining Your Koi Pond Throughout The Year
Koi can eat omnivorous foods such as a buffet of algae, bugs, plant matter, animal matter, and many others. The key here is to avoid feeding your koi with excess food and low-cost foods. Typically these fish eat less throughout the colder months which will help your water feature need less service as well.
Feeding Koi Seasonally
The type of season plays a big role in feeding your koi. The feeding should be typically regulated by the season you are in. For example, the winter period is a time of hibernation for koi. You’ll want to winterize your pond for your koi, in addition to changing their feeding. During the warmer months your fish, turtles, and other wildlife will be more active. We suggest feeding your fish only what they eat within 3-5 seconds, any excess is too much and should be avoided in the future to avoid costly filtration cleanings, and maintenance.
Proper Pond Temperature
Koi fish can survive in some of the coldest temperaments around. Thankfully we are located in California and most ponds we maintain do not need a special heater or some sort of winterization. Although living in a warmer climate means more algae-blooms, and overall pond cleanings – so prepare for that by not overfeeding your fish.
Maintaining Proper Oxygen Levels In Your Orange County Koi Pond
Oxygen can help fish digest food easier and also serves as a good “back-up” if your filtration were to ever cease while away. While not 100% safe (power-failures cause oxygen pumps to fail) at least having an 02 setup in your pond, will help keep the fish more-lively, and safer during pump and filtration issues if they present. We see many properties with too-many fish, and once those pumps turn off – the fish can start to stress resulting in a catastrophic fish-death episode.
Koi Fish Size Vs Food Supply
Another factor you have to consider is the size of the koi fish when feeding them. Smaller koi sized fish should be given smaller amount of fish for consumption and larger koi fish should be given more food. You can break the food into various pieces so that it can be easily absorbable for them.
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