Koi tearing up lily leaves

jazzbassretired

8 years ago

Need infro--ideas--on how to protect lily from koi

. Thanks Harry Joe

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Comments (4)

lmjk1221
8 years ago
Get them out of your pond. And by "them" I mean either the lilies or the koi.

My koi do not bother my lilies, or any of my plants for that matter, but many ponders find that they cannot keep plants in a pond with koi. And once they start eating your lilies, I'm not sure there's any way to stop them. Have you tried feeding them more? Are they eating them because they are hungry? If not then they are just doing what comes naturally.

If it were the pot they were bothering - some koi love to poke around in pots and dig out the dirt - there are many ways to stop that behavior. But the when its the leaves - that's almost impossible. Sorry - maybe someone else will have a great idea!
dan8_gw (Northern California Zone 9A)
8 years ago
Yea I have some crazy koi that get bored and they loved digging lilies up.

What I had to do was put large stones to completely cover the soil of the water lily pot. Large enough so that koi can't fit them in their mouths and move them out. That solved the uprooting of the lilies problem.

They soon figured they couldn't dig up the roots anymore and started ripping up the leaves. Now what kind of water lily do you grow? I found out that I can't grow night blooming water lilies because the leaves and stems are very tender, you can even snap it easy with your hands and koi could rip them up easily too. I had another lily, which is a hardy lily named "Nymphaea Colorado" and it has much tougher stems that are hard to rip up. This along with some other lilies like "Pink grapefruit" may be tougher than what you have in your pond now. My koi still messes with them, but its not nearly as affected as when I had my tender night blooming lily.
jazzbassretired thanked dan8_gw (Northern California Zone 9A)
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darlamhewitt
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I tried just about everything to get them to leave my lilies alone and nothing worked so I went on line and found a floating circular net that attaches to the pot and this is the first year I have had nice lilies..
jersey_marine
8 years ago
Had that problem and wasted $90 in lillies. Planted the lllies and then put sharp rocks ontop of the growing media. Now the Koi wont go digging

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Koi tearing up lily leaves

Comments (4)

lmjk1221

dan8_gw (Northern California Zone 9A)

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darlamhewitt

jersey_marine

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