While Koi Keeping is essentially an art, there’s also a significant helping of science, and that’s a problem because most of us find science, well…a bit boring. So you are all going to have to trust us a little when we say that although we can do all the sciency stuff, when we use it in this resource, we use it absolutely 100% to make important points, stuff we think you need to know, and not to score “aren’t we clever” brownie ones. The key factor in this is the real missing element that differentiates genuinely good Koi information, and all the rest… Experience. There is 100% nothing included that we haven’t experienced, and usually the hard way by getting it wrong, there are also often various ways of doing things right, which of course often adds to the confusion, so that’s the reason we’ve written down what we know works here… so you don’t have to go through what we did!
That’s also why we have put this repeating section as the first page linking all our general Water Quality elements to their more information entries. So our science lesson number 1 is simply; test, test and test some more! Water quality testing really is is the cornerstone of successful Koi keeping, simply because in a hobby where ignorance is not bliss – it’s actually a total and potentially deadly liability. No-one else will tell you this, and will usually couch advice in this regard in general terms like… ”as necessary” or “when needed” which we think is a great big cop-out. So we’ve come up with a table indicating just how often, and when testing your pond water is really necessary. This assumes things are “normal”, If things are not “normal”…test everything, every day!… and don’t forget to write down and record each and every result!
