 As you can see from the pictures, each pond has it's own particular shade of green. While koi hobbyists strive to have clear water in their ponds, we try just as hard to promote green water in ours. In order to raise healthy, fast growing fish, we need to provide the fish with an environment that's as stress free as possible. The green water helps us achieve that goal. When the baby fry are stocked into the grow-out ponds, their primary source of food is tiny zooplankton, which feeds on the phytoplankton (green water). As the fish grow they increasingly depend on our supplemental feeding. As any fish keeper should know, increased feeding results in increased waste production from the fish. Here again, the green water saves the day. The phytoplankton, along with increasing populations of bacteria, utilize the fish waste as food, controling the damaging amonia and nitrite build-up. Each pond is it's own little eco-system. Keeping those systems in balance is one of the secrets to producing a healthy, quality fish that can withstand the severe stress of harvest, sorting and shipping that is necessary to get the fish to the end user. |