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WATER QUALITY
Maintaining water quality is a major factor in keeping long lasting fish and plants. You must have no traces of ammonia, nitrite, and nitrates in your water to have long term success. Ammonia is what is first created from the fish such as fish urine and solid waste. Other sources of ammonia are from decaying plant matter. After ammonia is created, nitrite is broken down from the ammonia and is less toxic to fish and plants but still quite harmful. Last after nitrite is nitrate. Nitrate is broken down further from the nitrites. This can be harmful to your fish but mostly in the long run. To get rid of nitrates, plants consume or use up the nitrates to grow. It really fertilizes plants well. Other parameter to watch for in your water are pH, temperature, and salinity. pH is a balance of acidity and alkalinity in the water. There really shouldn't be too much alkaline or acid in the water. You really want to aim towards keeping the pH at a neutral level of 6-7. Koifish are very hardy and can stand water temperatures up to 35-85°F. So during the seasons, fish will do fine within that range just as long as the water does not change within 3°F within a 24 hour period. Salinity shouldn't be a problem for your pond. If you happen to have a lot of salt, that isn't too good and a %50 water change may be beneficial. If your water is really green that is probably because there was a sudden algae bloom and the algae in the water has had great amounts of nitrates to consume. Koi fish actually enjoy the green water as it actually provides food. Many tiny bugs which eat the algae get eaten by the bigger koi. As long as you have a good filtration system that is efficient and a well established biological filter in the pond, your water quality should be great.
