Butterfly Live Koi

Koi fish for an Aquarium..Opinions please?

Yes, I know they are pond fish…but I absolutely love these fish. I live in NYC, so I dont have a pond. But I’m getting ready to move into a loft and I have more than enough space for the right size aquarium, I want my aquarium to have:

2 Koi
2 Butterfly Koi
I am positive that I won’t have more than 4 Koi fish in the aquarium..

As far as tank mates, I want about or maybe more of:

4 Calico Shunbunkins
4 Comets
4 Rynkin
2 Moors
5 Veiltails

What size Tank would you recommend for these fish?
Feel free to provide any advice..Thanks in Advance

I have three koi between 4″ and 7″ long that I keep in a 55 gallon aquarium indoors, and they do just fine. They have been in there for 18 months now with no problems. I also have 15-20 koi between 6″ and 24″ that I keep in an outdoor pond, and truthfully, the only difference is that the ones indoors grow much more slowly. Other than that, they are every bit as active, people-oriented, healthy, etc. In fact, my indoor ones are probably more healthy because I am not constantly fighting parasites introduced by birds visiting and bathing in the aquarium the way I do with the pond!

I recommend the koivet.com website – I rely on that site alot for diagnosing and correcting problems, etc. And koi ARE a very dirty, destructive fish. They LOVE to tear plants out of the gravel, etc., and eat pretty much any live plant you try to grow in there. Larger ones will also crunch down snails. That is one precaution I’d recommend you to take if you decide to put koi in an aquarium -make the gravel small. Koi have been known to pick the gravel pieces up to suck the algae and other critters off, only to swallow the rocks and have them lodge in their gills (this can kill them if not treated immediately). So, the gravel should be small enough, relative to the size of your fish, to pass through their gills with no problems. And make sure you have adequate water filtration – in the past I’ve run a biowheel but recently switched to a penguin. You may even want to consider over-filtration because ensuring good water quality is the number one good thing you can do for your fish.

Feed a good quality koi pellet – not flakes, and supplement with green leafy lettuce, watermelon slices, orange slices, etc. Even small pieces of wheat bread or cheerios make good treats for koi.

And having said all that, I think I would pass on the suggested tank mates. They get along just fine when they are the same size, and you don’t have to worry about koi eating goldfish young – around 10″ is about the minimum spawning size for koi, and water temperature plays a part, too. Once their eggs hatch, the adult koi will not eat anything that they can recognize as a fish – so as soon as their young (or anything else’s young) get to be at least an inch long or so, they’d be fine with much larger koi. Goldfish are not so picky, though – they WOULD eat young koi. Plus, the moors and the veiltails, etc., are made more for floating and looking pretty – koi can sometimes be quite energetic and acrobatic swimmers, and might stress out some of the more “lazy” swimmers like the moors.

My final reason against housing goldfish is because compared to koi, they are just plain dumb. Koi are extremely friendly, trainable fish. After having koi, I would never go back to goldfish – not nearly as friendly or trainable. Plus, koi tend to elect a “queen” (I guess it can sometimes be a king, but we’ve always ended up with queens) – the dominant fish that the others look to and follow, etc. If you get a good, people-oriented, smart koi as the queen, all your koi follow suit. If you get a goofy, shy, goldfish as the queen, your koi won’t live up to their potential and will be timid and goofy, too, just like the goldfish.

Anyway, that’s just my two cents’ worth as a longtime fish keeper and koi afficianado (both indoor and out). I say go for it – I think you’ll be just fine if you start out slowly and don’t get too many fish for your tank, too quickly, and stick with all koi if that’s the direction you’re going to go.

Hope this helps.

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