Natural Pond Heaters

[ketan_bhatt]

Novice. I have an outdoor pond (100Ltr / 250 G) in my garden (Ahmedabad, India). I have a pair of Koi and a turtle since last 4 months. During winter season temparature goes down to 5C for a couple of days. Yesterday I found one of the Koi fish dead. I suspect it died due to cold weather.

Can someone suggest very little or NO cost tricks to make Koi and turtle adapt comfortably to extreme weather condition for a few days in winter.

Thanks.

 

[jpaner]

First of all the koi should be ok at these temps for a couple of days. This makes we wonder why you lost them. Is your pond very small and the the temperature changed very quickly? I have a couple ideas. First one is to make the pond larger. It will take a lot longer to loose heat from a 10,000 gallon pond than 100 gallon pond. The other easy fix is to make a plastic cover for the pond. You can make it out of PVC pipe and cover it with clear plastic, like a tent. This should cut down on a lot of heat loss. Most of your loss is due to evaporation.

John

 

[Shekoi]

the pond should be over 4ft deep for keeping koi over winter. i've not lost a fish due to the cold and it gets to around -5C some times, but not often.

it;s died either due to a really quick temperature chance or there is something else.
is the pond filtered?? 250g is just enough for one koi? they produce a lot of waste. it could have become weak due to poor water and then the temperature finished him off.

sorry for your loss.

 

[ketan_bhatt]

Thanks

Thanks a lot for couple of replies.

I am not in the position to make the pond bigger. But I think idea of covering the pond with plastic sheets 1 feet above the surface may reduce heat loss due to evaporation and help Koi/Turtle. Thank you.

Temparature did NOT change quickly. One of the 2 koi that I have (both 10cm long) died few days ago. May be it was weak for some reason and temparature finished it.

My fresh water turtle is around 2kg. I hope it can withstand extreme weather conditions (temprature 5C in winter to 44C for few afternoons of summer)

Thank you again.