Larry Lunsford

10. Take advice from the kid at the pet store. For most, their knowledge is limited to the hype printed on the boxes of the products they sell - they don't know anything about products they don't carry and have little real experience.

9. Add too many Koi too quickly. The Koi you already have will grow quickly. As your fish mass increases, so must your filtration and pond keeping skills. Adding more Koi only exacerbates the situation.

8. Assume that the sore on the side of your Koi will just go away. If your Koi gets injured from some physical event (such as banging against a rock) the wound may heal on its own. If a sore just appears, its a sure sign of water quality problems. Find and fix the problem ASAP.

7. Put off cleaning your filters for "just a little while longer". Dirty filters are a breeding ground for parasites and bacteria. Decaying material also gives off poisonous gasses. Keep your filters clean. Don't worry about loosing all your good bacteria - they grow back quickly (just don't chlorox your filter).

6. Drop the hose into the pond to top it off and run to the store for a "quick" errand. Come home hours later to chlorinated Koi. Never just turn on the hose and leave. At least use a timer, but be very careful about not putting too much faith in a timer. Your best bet is to put all new water into a quarantine tank, treat and test it, then pump it into your pond. Treat that hose like a loaded gun - don't point it at any Koi you don't want to blow away with chlorine.

5. Leave a full bag of Koi chow with instructions "feed daily" for the neighbor kid while you go on a three week vacation. Come home to empty bag, foul water, and sick Koi. Your Koi will do just fine without food while you're gone. If you must have them fed, put out pre-measured amounts and put them on half rations.

4. Ignore your carbonate hardness (KH) until your pH crashes. You must keep adequate levels of carbonates and bicarbonates in your pond. Failure to monitor KH is the number one cause of bio-filter problems. In lined ponds, you must monitor KH or you WILL run out, the pH WILL crash, and you've got a crisis in your pond.

3. Don’t bother to test for chlorine or use dechlor. Test your tap water every time you add water to your pond. You never know when you're going to get hit with high doses of chlorine. Always use dechlor. Chlorine damages the gills - the affects of many small doses of chlorine can add up to major damage.

2. Assume that your water parameters are fine and don't need to be tested. You need to establish a routine for testing and stick to it. As your pond matures, you can relax your testing routine, but you can't eliminate it. Testing your water is like giving your pond a check-up, do it regularly. At the first sign of trouble, your first response should be to test your water.