Greetings everyone,
I've never kept koi before. I was into saltwater reef tanks for about 10 years and I've bred and raised clownfish for a little while so I do know a few things about fish and water but this will be my first koi pond. My wife and I are lucky enough to own a beautiful craftsman home on a little over an acre in Santa Barbara. We completely restored it 7 years and destroyed most of the landscaping in close proximity to the house when we replaced the foundation. We've been wanting to landscape the yard ever since and so this pond is part of a larger project to redo the yard in front of our house. I'm a car and I spend most of my free time in my workshop restoring cars so I'm going to hire a contractor to build this pond.
After spending some time poking around the net I decided that the pond had to be concrete. I know that I really only have one shot at this so I decided to buy the pond design package from Sacramento Koi. Here is the design that they came up with https://sacramentokoi.com/design/89093105/
I spent a lot of time on this forum looking at pond builds and people's issues with ponds etc. I met with four different pond builders and even after telling them that I wanted a proper koi pond (not a landscape pond) they tried to convince me to drastically change my design. One claimed that a bottom drain was a liability and the other claimed that "natural" liner pond was the way to go while at the same time telling me that it was going to need to be emptied and thoroughly cleaned out one a year. Sounds like a lot of work to me.
My main goal is to keep nice big fish and have as maintenance free pond as possible.
Here is the site
Here is the concept
All of the filtration will be about 75 feet away. I'm building a small concrete pad that will be enclosed. I'm leaving enough room near the filtration area for a possible quarantine tank.
I've also made a couple changes to the initial pond design. At my contractors suggestion I upgraded the pump to a pentair AES spartus varaible speed unit. I've also added a incoming water filtration system and a system that will perform automatic water changes and use that water for irrigation.