A Beginners Guide to Bottom Drains of Koi Pond Construction

Designing your pond

Your Koi pond construction design is the key to its success, or its failure.  You must have a clear understanding of what you are looking to achieve. Proper planning of every stage now will help to alleviate much unnecessary stress and anxiety later, not to mention the money saving benefits of doing things right the first time. There are many key factors to keep well in mind at all times during the design phase of building your pond. I find that making a checklist of all things required helps to keep things in perspective and in order. By making a Koi pond construction check list you will soon have a much clearer idea of the equipment and supplies you will need to finish the job successfully. You will need to develop an understanding of mechanical and biological filtration, stand pipes, bottom drains and so on. Building a Koi pond can be complicated, and many Koi fish enthusiasts get stuck in the beginning asking where do you even begin?

Keeping things simple will aid in allowing you to absorb the relevant information needed to understand all of what designing and building a pond environment for your Koi entails. Shape, size, and depth are the three most important criteria you’ll need to know. This will act as a foundation from which you will build everything else.  While determining those three dimensions of your Koi pond construction, keep in mind not only the aesthetic effect it will have on your yard but, more importantly, the effect it will have on your Koi.

Koi can grow to be quite large fish.  They thrive when they have lots of water and space to grow.  Similar to a goldfish in many ways, Koi will tend to grow to “match” the size of the container or environment they are placed in.  More accurately, the size of your pond will be a determining factor on how large your Koi can be.  As a general rule, the large a fish is, the healthier it is.  Therefore, Koi pond construction should be around 10,000 liters (roughly 2,500 gallons.)  You can get to this volume in a number of ways but increasing the depth of your pond is key to your fishes' development.  Why?  Deeper ponds allow Koi to grow to healthier sizes.

Another way you can get bigger Koi is to introduce a current into your pond.  You can do this in many ways but the easiest and most common is to incorporate a directional flow via the water return from your filtration system.  This adds a more natural feel their environment, closer to what Koi are used to in the wild. Whether your Koi pond construction design incorporates the use of gravity or artificial means of producing water current, providing a constant flow of water gives your Koi a current to swim against. This builds muscle and functions much like daily exercise does for us.  It makes them healthier and, not surprisingly, Koi who “fight” a current tend to live longer.