Look what fell off the back of a Lorry!

We had the pleasure of attending Dutch National in August 2004 with the South East Section…..and that is where the story really begins.  If you’ve never been to the show then you are missing out.  Held in the grounds of a castle it has just about everything you can wish for ……superb Koi, food, filters, clothing and of course pond constructors.

Before I go any further I would like to make it clear that whilst I wanted a new pond it was Colin who got very enthusiastic about doing this when he saw the Ma-Koi Stand at the show.   After a discussion with the guys on the stand our minds were buzzing and it wasn’t long before we had decided that we would get a quote from them.

October 2004 and we’ve got the quote…… including delivery and vat it worked out to under 8,000 Euro (approximately £5,500) not bad we thought but we also had to factor in the crane to lift it over the garage… but I’m jumping ahead!  The pond was designed to be 5m x 2.5m x 1.8m (internal measurements) and would have a window at one end, six lights, 2 mid feeds and a skimmer.  The only things we supplied were the 2 air hats that we had from the previous pond. It will be raised approx 30” out of the ground, heated and filtered by a Nexus 300 with Answer 325 and a Bakki Shower.  They will be gravity fed from the bottom drains (1 bottom drain per filter).  The Filter House will be completed later in the year, or probably in 2006, as I still cannot find a shed/garden room that I like!  In the meantime they will be outside and all the electrics will be housed in the existing fish house.  The plan at the moment is to feed the nexus through UV and heater and back into the pond via one of the mid feeds.  The Bakki Shower will be piped through a vegetable filter and also to the other mid feel.  This will give us the option of shutting off the vegetable filter in the winter if necessary and running through the mid feed.  This is the plan as at March 05 but it could change and we may not use the vegetable filter.

So we begin the many emails that Matthijs at Ma-Koi has had to endure from me, I don’t think there has been a week that I haven’t asked a question or made a request.  But through it all we have received excellent communications and help from them every step of the way.

So we now start the planning of when to move the fish, book the crane and of course plan to go over and see the pond prior to shipping.  We decided to have the pond installed late March 2005 and planned to start stripping the existing pond out at the end of February.  We were very lucky to have some friends (at least I hope they are!) who had a very large Aquoisis vat that they kindly lent to us.  We originally wanted to put the vat in the garage but in the infinite wisdom of our builders who put a wall in the middle of the double garage we couldn’t fit it in.  So the next option was the middle of the lawn - we now have a very large water feature in the lawn -Charlie Dimmock would be proud!!

Sudden panic sets in when you realise just how close the delivery date is and everything goes into overdrive.  With the pond set up we start to pump the water from the existing pond into the vat.  With that half completed the fish are moved and by the end of the day we’ve got the vat filled with water, fish installed in their temporary home and the nexus set-up and running, as well as the heater and air all running.    As we didn’t want to loose any heat from the vat we bought 3 rolls of loft insulation and lagged the vat and the nexus.  There is a drain point on the vat so I suggested that we pump from that through the heater and into the Nexus, then pipe from the Nexus and drop back into the vat at the opposite side to the exit.  We’ve lagged the pipes from the heater to keep the heat in as well as the pipes from the Nexus.  Anyway it’s not too pretty but it’s working extremely well – one thing we did do was to take out the Answer and replace it with the foam and create a vortex chamber which then feeds the K1 chamber.