build a bigger one, heh. kidding, watch your water chemistry for a while to get used to it's individual fluctuations.

I wouldn't rush into putting koi in a new pond as hard as it is to resist.

really, just enjoy it, Japanese raised koi long before uv sterilizers and science.

Congrats an your new obsession <G>
I have been ponding for a little more thsn 6 years now and love it. Unfortunately I don't have the room for koi as my pond is just a 220 gal preform. What do you have?
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Holly
zone7

Congrats, you'll have so much fun. Especially once you get fish. I started my pond, about 2000 gal, 3 years ago as a water garden but desided I needed fish too. What I did was to go to a pet store and bought 50 small feeder goldfish for $5. This is a trick I learned while setting up aquariums. Having the fish in the water completes the cycle for your biological filtration. Using feeder goldfish is cheap if you lose them but they are hardier than koi. I didn't lose any, in fact after a few months I released about 120 in a local park pond, you could probablly sell them back to the pet store if you wanted as well. I feel I rescued them from being snake food at least for awhile and they helped me get my eco-system stable.

good luck...

i'm one of the people with koi that the real colectors/breeders/fans don't like

i moved into a house with a small pond and after flushing the water and tossing some ph stuff in we got 6 small koi. with 5 left we found they are pigs
they seem to love the murky water ... they eat the scum so you only need to feed them if you want them to come up close. but if you want pretty big fish and clear water talk to these guys ... i just wanted some fish to watch when i'm home.

so decide if your after a mudhole (natural) or a pretty clear pond to enjoy your work. then go from there

you can take the perfect filtered pond with all the gaggets

or make it a mudhole and see what happons

i tend to go the mudhole route.

they eat the crud that grows and i change the water every month or 2

i lost 2 of the 6 i bought 6 months ago ... but i suspect the cat not the water/unseen foes