I was looking for information on pond filters and stumbled upon this site. I’ve had had several small above ground ponds over the past 15 years using several filter designs including my own home built filters, but from the looks of the KOI ponds on this site, I’m not sure I want it anymore.
I ended up with goldfish after my daughter came home from Girl Scouts with a goldfish. She was supposed to keep it alive for a week if I remember correctly, but it died the first night. She was in tears so I went out to buy another fish and of course I had to buy one for each of my 3 kids. I had an old aquarium stored in the garage from when I used to have tropical fish many years ago before the kids were born.
All was well until I took the aquarium outside to clean. While washing it I set it down on a very small pebble and it cracked the glass immediately. It just so happened that there was a little child’s plastic pool in the back yard, so I through them in it until I could fix the broken glass. Well it was a little more difficult to fix then I thought so I figured I would just buy another aquarium.
Days turned into weeks and so on, but the fish were doing really well in the aquarium and then I noticed that they were jumping out of the water eating mosquitoes. I asked the kid if they were feeding the fish and each thought the other was feeding them. Well soon it was fall then winter with below freezing temps and I just assumed that they all died because I saw ice on top of the water.
We bought a new home that spring and as I was cleaning the place up to move I discovered that the fish were still alive, so bought a small plastic pond with a filter and built an above ground pond with landscape blocks. Everyone loved it and then I noticed that the fish were multiplying. Soon I had more fish then I wanted.
That was over 15 years ago and they are still surviving, although I don’t know how many are from the original pond. Anyway I'm now trying to decide what the future is for these fish.