Who said koi don’t bite
by koimaster on 30/07/09 at 11:49 am
Who said koi don’t bite
Well it all started with a tiny 200 gallon goldfish pond in the bottom left hand corner of the garden a couple years after moving into the house. After visiting local garden centres looking at koi with no pattern and I would now class as very low grade with a high price tag.
After a year of having the little pond I started looking at keeping koi and started to realise that to keep these swimming jewels would take just a little bit more than a little pond with a little pump. I took to the internet to widen my knowledge of modern day koi keeping and started to plan a koi/goldfish pond around 2000 gallon.
I made friends with a whole host of people young and old within a big family circle of koi and got an invite to visit a pond local to get some ideas and more info. I met Ian and he showed me his pond and wow I was gob smacked koi bigger than one of my kids and this was a big turning point which made me revert plans and have a 2000 gallon koi only pond.
This was the decision that would shape my plans in the future to put me where I am now. AS I started to learn more and more by keeping koi I could tell the koi bug had bittern me and was not going to let go. Later that year I got an invite to koi-uk ltds first open day at Weston super mare.
After hours that seemed like minutes walking around mud ponds and vats full of koi I started to thing bigger and better but money would be a big hold back so I put any plans on hold and left them simmering. I joined a koi forum extremekoi.co.uk and asked if I could help out free of charge as I felt there are people just starting up and new to the world of koi that could learn from what I have learn hence returning the favours to the koi circle and meeting new people.
After a year or two of the plan being on it reached boiling point I wanted new fish but the pond was not big enough or that’s what I told the missus. In the twist I added plans for a nexus 300 but the budget would not stretch so I used the filter I had as it could handle the imposed upgrade. As the plan got underway the digging and re-building the forum took a turn for the worse as a hacker hacked the site and the backup was way back in 96-97 .This happening over a time the site got swamped with spam. I finished the pond got it up and running all was going good, I started adding new fish I found a real good koi breeder/importer ACM.com and as I live not 5 minutes away there is not a month imp up there, the trouble being is the more you learn about koi and quality etc the more you pick the koi that costs the most in the tank.
I finished the pond got it up and running all was going good up until January this year you see my job was a warehouse manager managing the whole of the south west’s Woolworths and w h smiths and with Woolworths going bust I lost my job. I got a payment and this made it possible to get the nexus I always wanted so January the nexus was fitted and haven’t looked back since.
Also in January extremekoi was still in the same sorry state so I start very quickly to learn html and php to build a web forum of my own 16th of January
was born and has took the Google ranks by storm being ranked from 1st to 16th in many keywords this coupled with the friendly members and lots of helpful articles has made the site gain members every day.
Thanks for reading
Koimaster
Michelle Gradley
Jul 30th, 2009
Hi, sounds similar to so many stories. We all seem to start off thinking small then things develop and develop limited only by the depth of our pockets. Would be great to see some photos of your pond and fish. I will do the same soon.
Michelle
koimaster
Jul 30th, 2009
Hi michelle,
I will do i will also dig out photos of the 2000gal pond as well as the current pond. i will also find some of the fish i currently have and some babies i bred last year [which i uploaded before the article.