by ewsisphotos
Koi Garden – The Key Ingredients
Nowadays, you will find a Koi garden in almost every second home that you see. Koi gardens are ecosystems complete with landscape and a fresh water pond containing Koi fish. Koi fish are also known as Japanese carp and are multicolored. These fish are popular as ornamental fish and are used in decorative fresh water ponds all across the world. Most home owners also use them to landscape their backyards with a Koi garden.
Though it is most likely an expensive affair, a Koi garden can enhance the beauty of your yard or backyard. The fresh water pond generally costs a lot of money since it needs to be dug in your yard. However, on the brighter side, having a Koi garden in your home will not only enhance the value of your property but also help you to de stress and give you a great past time. Koi garden is not as complicated as it is made out to be.
The ingredients of a Koi garden are simple; a Koi pond, Koi fish and other plants and flowers as per your preference. You can choose between American Koi fish and the rare Japanese Koi. While the Japanese Koi can be an expensive proposition costing more than $ 10,000 dollars, American Koi is cheaper and comes for a few bucks. A good idea is to gain expertise in managing your fish with American Koi fish rather than going in for the more expensive ones first. Once you are able to understand your fish well and manage them, then you can think about spending a fortune on the Japanese Koi.
The location of your Koi pond is of prime importance to ensure the good health of your fish. Most experts suggest that direct sunlight is not a good idea. However, this is also problem since if the pond is situated in the shade of plants and trees, then you will find it difficult to maintain the cleanliness of the pond as you will have to clean up the leaves and other foliage that will invariably fall into the pond.
More over as most people use pesticides and other chemicals in their gardens, pesticide riddled grass can be harmful or even fatal for your Koi.
Your Koi garden plants need to be chosen carefully. You cannot really have flowers or plants which have branches reaching inside the water. This is because the Koi fish is omnivorous and it may nibble on those plants from time to time which may become a problem. Keeping potted plants in water is also not a great idea since Koi is quite a curious fish and may dig into the roots of the plants and kill them.
This can be prevented by placing stones near the roots of the plants, so that Koi cannot dig into it. You can use water lilies as plants for your Koi garden since they are quite resistant to the elements of nature and can withstand the Koi fish as well.
A nicely maintained Koi garden is a great idea for every home. Not only does it take care of your stress and tensions but also enhances the beauty of your garden as well!