As Chris has been begging the MSB members for articles for the newsletter I thought it might be a good idea to write a koi keepers diary. So I will be writing a month-by-month record of the koi year 2002.

I really like March, the garden slowly comes back to life, daytime hours increase, the clocks go back & hopefully the air temperature gets warmer!  However this is the time of year that we need to be vigilant, as the temperature seems to change daily and as I am sure you all know, parasites become active at a water temperature of 10°C and our Koi immune system does not fully function below 15°C, this gives the little devils a head start over our koi. Our koi of course dislike all the temperature changes as well, this stresses them and parasites have a field day!!!!!

None of the above is a worry if you have a heated pond or any empty pond like Chris!  This is the first year that I have had a heated pond and I am very pleased with it. During the Christmas period when we experienced some extremely cold temperatures, indeed one day it was minus 9°C!!! The new pond dropped only 1°C below set point.

During October I lowered the temperature from 20°C – 15°C, as I purchased three new fish during this period I left the temperature at 15°C until January when I reduced the set point to 12°C. Now it is March I have increased the temperature back to 15°C, next Month I will increase this again to 20°C. The fish have come though winter with no problems and are very active and I believe have grown, they have not lost body weight as they have in previous years in an unheated pond.

However you can still have problems for instance during January the strainer blocked on the pump to the heat exchanger, I could not understand why the pond temperature had dropped to 9°C, and the digi-stat displayed 31°C!!!!!  When I realised the cause, all was well except the fish did not appreciate the drop of temperature and I had an outbreak of tricodina as well!!!!!

As Easter is early this year, all the dealers seem to have been to Japan to have fish ready for sell for the Holiday weekend, I will be fitting some screens and trellis to separate both gardens, hopefully I will also find time to finish of the hand rails around the back of the filter bay. Then I might wander off and find myself in local koi dealers somewhere, who knows what I may be tempted with!!!