You can make your own infusoria by steeping a lettuce leaf in half a quart jar of pond water, for about two weeks. Good for feeding fish fry and tadpoles. Just sit the jar in a brightly lit area and watch for the water changing, you should see little clouds of fine looking dust in the water. That should start to show in about a week. Leave it about another week or until you see a green tinge in the water and it should then be ready to feed to your fry. Feed them just a small amount, as the infusoria can turn the aquarium water green if too much is added at a time. "Horton"

Congratulations on taking the next step! OK....where do I start. First, consider going bigger. A LOT bigger. Koi get very large, over 30" in length and need space. Koi should have between 300 and 500 gallons each, so at your planned 1600 gallons you could realistically expect to keep no more than 5 koi. If you can double that to 3000 gallons you would be much better off. Depth needs to be a minimum of 36", although 48" is much better. 36" isn't very deep for a 32" long fish. Bottom drains are a MUST. Koi are very messy animals and produce a lot of waste. Most of that waste will sink right to the bottom and sit there until you remove it by vacumming, or the bottom drain carries it to the filter. You can buy bottom drains, commercially made. All you do is set the base in a bed of concrete in the bottom of the pond and attach the pipe that will be burried under the pond and come up at the side of the pond where it ties into the filter. Lay the liner in and get it secured. Then cut a hole in the liner in the center of the drain. Use sealant to prevent leakes and attach the plastic ring that comes with it with the stainless screws they provide you with. I have installed 5 drains in my own ponds and never had a leak. Get a 4" drain...anything smaller just won't move enough water. small koi will coexist peacefully with plants.....but the bigger the koi get, the more they will damage the plants. Koi love to dig in the pots and shread leaves. That is just their nature. You can have plants that stick up out of the water (iris, cattails, etc), just use a heave pot and use heavy round river rocks all on top of the soil to keep the koi out. And you many find that as your koi mature, even the rocks won't keep them out. Rocks on the bottom are a HUGE mistake. They trap debris that should not be left in the pond to decay. they provide a safe harbor for bacteria and parasites to breed, and koi can become injured on them. Seriously....leave them out. They do not look natural to me at all. In nature, you do see creeks with rocky bottoms, but I have never seen a lake or pond with a rock bottom. I love the look of a black liner bottom. When you have a beautiful collection of colorful koi swimming against that black bottom, you see the true beauty of the fish without the distraction of the rocks. Besides....the rocks will get covered in algae and won't look as nice as you think. I prefer to see koi when I gaze into a pond and not green rocks. A good supplier of equipment is AZ ponds. You can find them on the web. They are a little short on customer service, but their prices are unbeatable. Oh yeah....you need a skimmer too. You may want to check out a website called koishack. There are many wonderful threads over there in the construction forum with loads and loads of pictures. I just completed a new filter for one of my ponds that works every bit as well as a $1500 nexus filtes and it cost me around $150 to make it. Instructions for that are over there also.

Fish produce ammonia. Ammonia is toxic to fish. It is also uncomfortable so that might cause them to jump. Fish poop, excess food and organic waste rotting on the bottom produce nitrites and toxic gases as well as being a home and nutrient source for anaerobic bacteria. That may not cause them to jump but it is unhealthy for the fish and for humans. (You might like the link below.) Ph is affected by many things including rain, organic matter etc. Koi do not tolerate water that is too acidic. They do much better in alkaline water. Nitrites and nitrates in the water will cause water problems and feed algae. KH is a measure of buffering capacity or resistance to change in PH. Knowing the levels of these is important to avoid a crash that can and will kill fish.That is where a test kit comes in. There are 3 types. The first is a research grade kit and while extremely accurate it is expensive and you don't need that level of results. The second type are strips that come in packs of fifty, are easy to use and can be frustratingly inaccurate unless fresh, properly stored and kept absolutely dry until you use them. Most of the ponders on this forum don't use them although a few do. I tried them, didn't like them. Half of what I bought were not accurate. The third while not as accurate as the first is totally adequate for your purposes. It contains liquid chemicals, test tubes color charts and instructions for the tests you need to do regularly. They run around $25 to $30. It is recommended that they be replaced each year but I have cheated and had good results when the kit was carefully stored. I don't push it though. It is not worth it to me if I lose a koi because of it. The next part is from a web site but is correct. "When to test. An established pond with healthy Koi fish should be checked every month. It is only when you notice something out of the ordinary, and possibly during seasonal changes, that an additional test or two might be prudent. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. A simple test, at the right time, can prevent a minor problem from becoming a catastrophe. When starting up a new pond system, daily tests may be required then weekly for a couple of months until the system has stabilized." Right now your main concern should be ammonia. You have a lot of fish. Limits on the number of fish is usually figured by gallons of water to inches of fish. Since some of your fish are rather large you may very well be approaching the edge of disaster. The test kit will tell you. To reduce ammonia, you can aerate with a bubbler, agitate the water as with a waterfall or fountain or use a product to remove it chemically (I use a combination of Ammoblock and Activated carbon in a bag in the Skippy filter. It does a good job for my little pond) In any case, you need to test the water. Here is a link that might be useful: Ron's Pond Scum

Ada, Crape myrtles would be great if you don't mind that they are deciduous and you'd lose some of their screening in the fall thru spring. They do come in all different sizes, so be sure to select varieties that mature at the appropriate height, or you'll drive yourself crazy trying to keep them pruned back. You do know that many Crape Myrtles have powdery mildew issues, don't you? So, watch for the ones with resistance to powdery mildew bred into them--they are in a series with Native American names. One of my favorite is a purple-flowered one called "Catawba" that gets about 12' tall and 5' to 6' wide. "Tonto" is more the size you're looking for, maybe 8' to 10' tall and 5' wide and has gorgeous watermelon pink flowers. I might choose a holly like Berries Jubilee or Dazzler. Their deep green glossy leaves are so gorgeous, and the berries are just a bonus. Today's newer dwarf Nandinas never do as well as I think they will although some of the older common ones would be about the right height. My parents had a 5' to 6' tall and about 3' or 3.5' wide nandina (with the red berries)outside an east-facing window all our childhood and it is there still. It must be 40 to 50 years old. The newer dwarf varieties, though, seem to struggle more in drought and heat than that old standard one did. For a nandina that gives you a slightly different look, you could plant the yellow-berried one, which is Nandina domestica "Yellow Berried". There may be some named varieties with yellow berries, but all I've ever seen is the old common one. It gets about 6' tall. Is this a full sun location? If so, I'd be tempted to plant smallish trees like Chaste Tree (Vitex Agnus-Castus) or Desert Willow (Chilopsis linearis--not a willow and not a desert plant either). Both are deciduous, but the Chaste Tree spreads out really wide and is multi-trunked. (You can prune it to a single trunk, but I don't.) It is lovely in and out of bloom, attracts butterflies and has lovely bluish flowers. Desert Willow comes in the standard native version that gets about 12' to 14' tall in about 5 to 7 years. It also is a multi-trunked tree and it has lilac blooms. There are shorter, wider named hybrid desert willows, like "Bubba", that have gorgeous blooms and are more shrubby than tree-like. Because they are natives, they are relatively easy to establish and shouldn't need supplemental watering after their first 2 to 3 years in the ground, unless you are suffering from exceptional drought. They also have few insect pests and I've never seen any disease symptoms on them. I adore Southern Wax Myrtle (Myrica cerifera), which can be kept shrubby or pruned up tree form. It gets really tall and is very fast-growing. Mine grew about 15' in about 5 to 7 years, starting from 3-gallon plants. It obviously gets taller than what you're seeking, but I had to mention it because it is a top performer in our landscape. There is a dwarf version called, appropriately enough, Dwarf Southern Wax Myrtle, that gets 5' to 6' tall and it would make a nice screening plant. An underused shrub that has been around a long time and which forms an arching mound is Glossy Abelia. It has very tiny leaves and lots of very small white flowers that attract lots of bees. The tiny leaves are a dark green in summer and turn a sort of bronze-green in the cooler fall and winter months. Glossy Abelia gets about 5' wide and 5' tall although I don't know if it is an especially fast grower. The cultivar "Edward Goucher" is ever-so-slightly smaller, about 4' tall and wide and it has pink flowers. If you have soil that holds moisture well, then you might like Carolina Allspice (Calycanthus floridus), commonly referred to as sweet shrub due to its lovely aroma. It is not show-stoppingly lovely in appearance--just an average-looking shrub, but the fragrance is nice. Another under-utilized shrub is Black Kerria, also known as white kerria or black jetbead. It is Rhodotypos scandens and is fast-growing, and likes any well-drained soil. It actually is a member of the rose family and is an arching type of shrub that gets about 6' to 8' tall and not quite as wide. It has small, single, white flowers in midspring. There's also Japanese Kerria (Kerria japonica) and the one you usually see in nurseries is an old variety with double flowers (yellow) called "Pleniflora". It is a sort of gangly, arching shrub and it is unusual in that it blooms very well in almost total shade. In a partly shaded location, you can grow another shrub that is not especially common, but which is uncommonly lovely. It is called American Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) and it has unusual violet-colored berries that grow in clusters on the stems...spaced sort of like this: leaf, berry cluster, leaf, berry clusterm leaf, berry cluster. It is deciduous, but the berries hang onto the branches for a long time. We have them growing here in our woods in everything from morning sun/afternoon shade to almost full shade. If you want more of a lush, green, tropical look, you could plant canna lilies and the very large-leaved green elephant ears that get about 5' tall. The cannas might get 7' tall in good soil. There are lots of kinds of yaupon hollies and they come in all sizes, including dwarfs. Yaupons hollies are very nice and very tough, but tend to be overused in modern landscapes, not that I'd hold that against them. You also could use some of the large ornamental grasses as a screening plant, you know. I hope this gives you some ideas. Dawn