The Chairman of the Associated Koi Clubs of America Larry Leverett, the big fish of the koi hobby as Todo Todorsky called him, joined the hosts of the Koi Club of the Air for the first show of the New Year. Described by many as the nicest guy you could meet Leverett shared his expansive appreciation of America’s premier koi organization, he proudly represents.

This is Leverett’s second year as chairman. He was also chairman from 2000 to 2002 and Vice-Chairman making his time in leadership of AKCA nearly eight years he estimates. “It’s had its ups and downs,” Leverett said. ‘When we did the Koi Health Advisor’s Program people were patting me on the back for the good job I did where all I did was approve the budget for it and Spike Cover did all the work. You had to start saying hey that is not my program, but Spike Cover’s program.”

Leverett shared interesting snippets of AKCA history. “It’s interesting because I was looking at one of the magazines, the first KOI USA issue,” Leverett said. “And it was started in 1976. Ed Fujimoto was the first editor of that magazine and in his words, what he wanted that magazine to be, he wanted it to be dedicated to all koi lovers. And it was published in the hopes that it was looked on as a focal point and a sounding board and bible for much needed communications concerning koi activities in the United States. Now you have to remember this was before they had computers. So there was probably only maybe half a dozen koi clubs in the United States at the time. And very little was getting back and forth and I credit AKCA with bringing all these people together and making a world for these koi manufacturers that manufacture our pumps and filters today and giving them a market.” Leverett also credited AKCA for publishing materials including books that would not have been published otherwise.

“One of the things that is interesting is Ed Fujimoto in 1980 decided he was moving up to Washington and he decided to sell the magazine to AKCA,” Leverett said. “His asking price was $1500, which was way out of the budget. They didn’t have any money for that. So the directors at the time had to come up with money out of their pockets to buy the magazine and continue publishing it. And right now just to publish one issue takes about $40,000. So it has come a long way in just that short period of time.”

“I don’t think the koi hobby would have gone as far as it has so far if it wasn’t for AKCA,” Todorsky said. “That is my point exactly,” Leverett said. “We have judges who in my opinion, I consider our judges every bit as good as the Japanese judges. They do one heck of a job. And so we have a venue to show our fish where we wouldn’t have had that before. Just listening to your program recently we have got some new clubs starting to put on koi shows and that gives another outlet for the hobby. We are making some progress and the future looks real bright for us out there.”

“What do you have planned for the future,” Todorsky asked. “We have the Project KHV Fund,” Leverett said. “One of the reason AKCA is involved in that is because even though you have money it is important to get a bang for your buck. We go to universities and medical facilities that can do research, but we have to give them a guideline. You can’t just throw them $20,000 and say I want a cure for Koi Herpes Virus. It just doesn’t work that way. We have been in that boat before. We spent $20,000 and got a two-page report that a high school student could do. And so that is a waste of money. So when this particular project came up a lot of dealers came to AKCA and asked us to make sure this went in a good direction. I have to give a lot of credit to the dealers and manufacturers of koi products out there because they put a lot of money into this program because it is their future and it is their hobby as well. So we have raised a lot of money for that program. And we have money going out now. We have a couple of programs that are in place. And we have a board, a medical team consisting of scientists that are evaluating these programs. It is a very well run program and it isn’t going to waste money, but I expect some big gains in the coming years for KHV.”

“You have had some great leadership with Ray Jordan and now Gene Anderson,” Hawley said. “That is a big help.” Leverett agreed adding, “Gene Anderson is doing a really good job. I kind of keep tabs on a lot of these people from my perspective.” Leverett noted Spike Cover’s leadership in both the Project KHV and the KHA (Koi Health Advisor) Program. Describing how at board meetings they receive updates on the various programs and on the upcoming Phoenix AKCA Seminar and North Florida Seminar in 2008. “That is another thing you probably would not have if AKCA was not involved because I had to sign a contract with Jacksonville and that area with the hotel and we are on the line for $80,000,” Leverett said. “Hopefully we will get that much back in business for the hotel, but if we don’t come up to that AKCA has to foot the bill for the remaining balance.”

Todorsky a member of the North Florida Koi Club Seminar Committee said, “I know sometimes that bites. And sometimes it works out well. We are trying to put on a good set for you this time here in Florida.”
Todorsky then asked about the meetings of the AKCA board. “You were mentioning that you have your meeting once a month. And we here out in the hinterland get the minutes and so forth, but if a club has an issue that they would like to address what is the vehicle for that?”

Leverett replied with, “that is one of the things AKCA wants to do. That is why the main thing that we require all AKCA clubs have is an AKCA rep. And that AKCA rep’s duties are to report to a person at AKCA that is usually picked out that take a certain amount of clubs. And so once a month they tell that rep what is going on with the club. And that (report) is all included in our minutes, which are available on our website and are available to the AKCA rep. Now if as you say there are some problems that the club needs to handle or whatever, they need to have their AKCA rep contact his contact at AKCA and he can get that information for that club. And it works out well that way.” Leverett gave details of how AKCA provides insurance for koi shows and a special drawing held for AKCA reps that stay in contact with AKCA for six months, which is a reward and encouragement for participating. The prize is a trip to Los Angeles for a private pond tour and voting participation in that months’ AKCA meeting.

Hawley asked, “That is the role of the rep, the director they have a position a vote for the club in the business of AKCA?” Leverett said, “that is correct. Every club has one vote. And a lot of times they are not there to vote. So we vote in proxy for the clubs, but they have the right anytime they want to challenge a vote, to change a vote, vote against anything that is coming before the board, because it is basically an organization of the clubs. The clubs are the constituency. And basically the directors are just caretakers.”

Hawley asked, “has AKCA every considered a conference call sort of situation where some of these directors from around the country might could participate in what is going on kind of like you have done with KOI USA having an editor outside of the California area? In that way maybe you could bring more voices into the process?”

“Exactly,” Leverett responded. “That is one of the things, we are kind of poor in the sense that we could use more people, more directors at AKCA to give us more ideas and thus give more back to the koi hobbyists because it is a non-profit organization. Everything goes back to the hobbyists even the profits from KOI USA. And one of the things we are doing now is we do have at the meeting a telecommunications thing where as some directors are outside of the area they are on the phone. We have a speakerphone that sits in the center that can take a certain amount of calls. It is pretty crude right now. We have worked in the past with even trying to do it on the Internet where we could televise the meeting and then have it sent out to all the directors. That was costly at the time. So it is one of the elements we can’t afford to do right now, but as time goes by I think it will be a little cheaper.”

Hawley noted, “You are receptive to it, but even then I wonder if the AKCA bylaws allow for that or you don’t necessarily have to attend now? You have opened it up to allow certain folks and potentially folks could participate if there is some guru out there who could come up with an inexpensive way to hook folks up to communicate right?” Yea, exactly Leverett said. “We would love it. It would be great for people even if they are not voting just to watch the meeting and see what is going on. That is one the reasons we have the directors drawing. We are trying to get people to come in and see what AKCA does. Because one of the things that I have seen is you go out there and it is like AKCA is this kind of mystery organization out there. What does it do? I don’t even know what they are? We are trying to kind of get the word out saying this is what we do. It is a goodwill sort of thing. It is just to push the koi hobby.”

Hawley asked. “I know you have an election coming up in May, but just like you say for some folks AKCA is a mystery organization to them, but in the participatory sense how do folks get involved in the election process? I know you want to get people involved and more involved, but I bet if you poll the numbers most people don’t realize you have an election in May.”

“Exactly,” Leverett said. “I was surprised to hear you come up with that question because that is exactly what I get. We have in the neighborhood of about 104 clubs that belong to AKCA and when we do have the election we have usually maybe 60 clubs that bother to vote, which is kind of sad. So that is one of the things we are trying to do is get the word out to make AKCA more of a name because it is very important to the koi hobby and to everybody in particular that is associated with it including the businesses and vendors. Even when the bad stuff happens AKCA’s name is always up there. So you know they are a force out there in the field.”

Hawley said, “I know you are trying to drag people along and get them involved involved, but how would they know (about an election)? I know you have a voter’s pamphlet in California for voting, but we aren’t going to see an AKCA’s voter’s pamphlet are we?”

Leverett replied, “No. We have tried that before, but that kind of gets out of hand because maybe one candidate puts something out and that is it. And then it may not go past the AKCA rep for the club. He is supposed to talk it up. The AKCA rep should talk it up and say this is who is up for election and it is also up for anyone else that wants to be a write in candidate.”

Todorsky added, “I myself have been a rep in the past. I’m not currently, but I have in the past. And I know when the paperwork comes in and you basically have a slate of candidates and I bring this to the club the question is, who is that? And who is that person and what do we know about that person? And usually there isn’t more than one person offered for the position. So my club decides to put me up for something and like you say who is this Todo guy from California? So I appreciate that it is an election and that we have a democratic system, but a lot of the decisions, I’m just talking as an East coaster, a lot of those decisions we on the other coast here look at and say, well they’re out there doing their thing in California. And as long as we don’t have a grip about AKCA or the magazine the attitude is, well let them do what they are going to do.”

Leverett replied, “I’ve heard that complaint since I’ve been there of what do we get on the East Coast side? And one of the things I’ve tried to do since I’ve been the chairman I’ve tried to embrace the East Coast and include them into things that are going on. When we started the KHA program we excluded the West Coast as a starting point and made the East Coast a starting point in trying to make it as fair as possible.”

There has been influence and leadership from outside the California area on the board. “We actually had a chairman that was from the Colorado area about 15 years ago,” Leverett noted. “So there was some change, but what we like to see is somebody that starts in as vice chairman and works his way up to chairman so he has got some kind of a feel for the organization and how it is running. For instance, when I started, being that I was in business, I said we have to make money here. They had to take me aside and say look we are not here to make money. We are here to give away money. We have programs and we are trying to do this and trying to that for the koi hobbyists.”

Leverett spoke of the speakers program, and myriad of programs that AKCA offers and noted AKCA pays $130 for each clubs insurance premium each year even though the clubs pay in only $100. They also print guidebooks that formerly went out for free to all members, but that has been revised to incorporated into a program to encourage subscriptions to KOI USA where those profits in turn go back into programs. The cost of printings and bookstore operations were mentioned along with the judges program, Koi of the Year, Champion of Champions, Koi Health Advisor Program, and more! This is all done to benefit the koi hobbyists Leverett said.

Leverett explained why his initially ran and has continued to be a part of the AKCA leadership by saying, “Wow! This is such a great organization and my only concern at the time, as I didn’t know how it ran too well at the time, was there are a lot of old people running this organization and what happens if they die? That is why I got involved among other reasons. I didn’t want the organization to just fade away when it is so important to our hobby. I’m involved in it and we have got people like Bill Thompson. He has been doing an excellent job and Spike Cover, Burt Ballou, and the Finnegan’s Joan and Bob. For all these people, this is their life. They contribute so much to this organization just for the love of the hobby.”

One of the toughest, most stressful, and mentally challenging aspects of pulling off a successful koi show on the day of judging is maintaining all the data, which for years now has been done in specially designed computer programs. John Flowers, a long time member of the Rocky Mountain Koi Club is one of those program developers that quite probably created the user-friendliest package any club could imagine.

“I’ll give you a little bit of history on it,” Flowers said. “I’m really into computers. And I think that helps if you are going to run a program like this. I started out a few years back using an Excel spreadsheet, which was so basic and just really didn’t do the job. I acquired another person’s koi judging program and I attempted to run it, but maybe due of my own ineptness I had major problems with it. So I said I’m going to write my own program. And I spent about a year developing my own program for judging koi shows and tracking all the fish entered in the show, the judging process, and the selections for awards and all the final documents up to and including the certificates for the bigger award winners. I wrote the program in Microsoft Access. My program goes all the way from the benching process to the final awards certificates. I provide all of the appropriate documents for the judges. I provide the benching forms to start off with. Every fish is photographed and entered into Access. All the products will have the pictures of the fish and their category and size. And these are appropriately sorted for the judges. Then I produce another product for the judges that they then use to start the move up process. I do the move ups manually, but the way I have it set up in my computer it’s visually very easy to see what move ups need to be made. I know there are some programs that do it automatically and I’ve heard pros and cons about that, but I do it manually probably in about the same time constraints that an automated program does the move ups.”

Todorsky stated, “I’m very interested in the fact that you incorporate pictures in them. I know there are some other programs out there that do that, but I know that the pictures are so critical. Having the pictures available for the judges really smooths it out for them. Sometimes the pictures coming from the people participating are from a Polaroid or God knows what camera. Then the judges might say, is this the Yamabuki that I’m looking at or is this the Yamabuki I’m looking at? I’ll be perfectly honest with you. I think I missed out on an award one time because I had a bad picture. The judge said I can’t actually tell which fish that was and we got shutout.”

Flower’s program does address these issues and more. “That is the same way I feel about the benching form,” Flowers said. “In a lot of shows the owner has the option of filling out his benching form and bringing it with him to the show site, but then you have a benching team. They are going to go and re-verify everything on the benching form anyway. So why even go through that process when I can stand there shoulder to shoulder with the benching team and as they read off information I put it into the computer. I have a tablet personal computer. It is just like having a clipboard. And then my camera is connected directly to the computer. At that time I take the fish’s picture and it dumps directly into the computer. And I move it right into the record and the process works extremely well. Everything is photographed. When I produce the benching form after a tank is completed the benching form has all the disclaimer statements of the rules that the owner needs to be aware of. It calculates the fish load for that tank. It calculates how much money is owed. And there is a place for the owner to sign. So basically I accomplish the same thing with a computer.”

The Koi Club of the Air hosts were in awe of the program description. “That is really wonderful,” Todorsky noted. “I know when you are there on Friday night or Saturday morning and you are trying to bench these fish it is a zoo. Even in a well-run show there is a lot of stress, people coming up to the table with I’ve got my pictures and so forth. Any streamlining of that is definitely advantageous.”

Flowers has run the program for Rocky Mountain Koi Club for approximately the last five annual shows and he recently ran the program at the first Las Vegas Koi Club Show and has another one scheduled in Minneapolis in August.

One of the unique features of what Flowers offers clubs is he actually travels with the equipment to the show and runs it for you! “All I ask if I go to a club to do their show is that they furnish me the expendables ie a ream of printing paper. I bring the printer, the camera, the computer, the program and myself. My wife sometimes comes as assistance also. So the club really just has to provide a little travel expense and that is all they have to do.”
Hawley chimed in jokingly with, maybe a few chips for Las Vegas? “Oh, yea,” Flowers chuckled. For new clubs or those with a new rotation of volunteers Flower’s offer will surely ease the pain of many a club taking care of one of the most problematic components of the show. With only about a third of AKCA clubs being koi show producers Flower’s offer to help the experienced and experienced alike has market potential.

And the judges also love it! “All programs are going to be slightly different, but I have had some of the top judges such as Dr. Galen Hansen extremely pleased with the products that I present the judges,” Flowers said. “They are detailed. They are easy to read and provide plenty of room for the judges to put in their notes. I’ve had nothing but positive feedback from the judging side of the house.”

For those wanting more information on how John Flower’s and his program can ease your show production contact him at his email account BarbandJohn1@msn.com or call (303) 283-9113.

Sonja & Ken Kahkola are Florida koi hobbyists and friends of KCOTA that provided this terrific tale of love and high quality fish husbandry for listeners a year ago. Now in remembrance of their pet named Topper, which passed, we share complete details of the surgery they conducted that kept their pet alive for nearly a year to the date.

by Sonja Kahkola

Ken and I bought our house six years ago with an existing concrete pond of approx. 1000 gallons. It had 54 goldfish and the sludge on the bottom was so thick it hosted over 50 crayfish. This was our introduction to ponding. My former employer gave us our first Orenji Koi about half a year later and told us where we could see and buy more. Needless to say, we were hooked and progressing into the Koi world. In the fall of 2002 we joined Nature's Coast Koi and Water garden Club and saw just how big and beautiful these Koi really become. This led to the building of our 17,000-gallon pond the summer of 2003 and we have never looked back. All that we have learned along the way brings me to our story.

We bought a Shubunkin from our local pet store about five and half years ago and named him Topper after Top Account, the racehorse my husband used to take care of. I'm not sure when Topper started to hang vertically just below the waters surface under the lily pads, but he was doing it for a few years. He never seemed sick and was the only fish in the pond to do this. We put it down to, that's just Topper.

Early this spring we noticed his left side bulging. Over the summer it grew so large that he was losing his scales where the skin was stretching. He started hanging with his mouth almost out of the water and he would list to the right side. The side had become so grossly enlarged, we figured he had a tumor. On Mon. Sept. 19th we found Topper vertical, with his head out of the water and trying to fight his way below the surface. This couldn't go on, he was going to die.

Ken and I have a very small medical background with racehorses, so we decided to try and remove the tumor ourselves. We figured he had 100% chance of dying or 1% chance of living if we could do it. I washed two sets of scissors, two Exacto knives, a new pocket knife and a rectangular casserole dish in hot soapy water. Ken filled a plastic plate with isopropyl alcohol and added our utensils and three sewing needles strung with six-pound test line. In the backyard our 460 gallon quarantine tub with filter was clean and ready with the salt at 0.2%. We lay down a tarp to work on, had our Koi show bowl set with fresh water and an airstone to revive him and put about one and a half gallons of clove oil water, mixed at 5 drops/gal. in our bowl with handles to put him to sleep. The other half gallon of clove oil water we used to half fill the casserole dish, where we had a hand towel rolled half way so he wouldn't slide around and his hind end would be slightly raised with his head down. About three times during the surgery, I poured some of the clove oil water over his head and gill. We made our incision in the center, below the lateral line. It cut into the tumor and started to bleed. Our simultaneous thought, was that we have already killed him. All we could do was press on. Ken held the skin while I used sharp toenail scissors to first cut to the front and then to the back of the tumor. Next, I held the skin while Ken used the Exacto knife to cut the thin strands of skin-like material between the skin and tumor. As we got to what looked like the small neck of it, we were having trouble getting high enough to get the end, so we started from the bottom and went in behind and we think we got all of it out where it was attached up by his spine. From the top down Ken filleted his ribs off of the tumor, which we could now see, was just shy of the size of a tennis ball. As we removed it, we were hoping that we hadn't just taken out one of his organs with the tumor growing inside because it was encased in its own sack.

Now it was time to stitch him up. Ken started with one needle at the center and went towards the back and I started from the front towards the center. It was very difficult because his skin was stretched to less than paper-thin and his distended ribs were trying to stick out. His breathing was very shallow and slow, but we took another minute to apply some Debride Ointment when the stitching was finished.

To bring him out of the anesthesia, Ken held him upright and I held the airstone under his face in the recovery bowl until he started wanting to swim. The whole procedure from the start to waking took around 20 to 25 minutes. Once his breathing looked closer to normal, we transferred him to the quarantine tub. He hung on his side at the surface, but his head was below the water. A couple of times he tried to swim down, but couldn't. We went inside to read Doc Johnson's book, Koi Health and Disease, and found that this was normal. As evening approached Topper was able to do a slow and easy swim around the tub. It looked like his swim bladder was adjusting.

On Tues. morning we decided to inject him with antibiotics and add a goldfish buddy from his normal pond. We hoped this would give him a reason to live. I thought I had disposed of all of the diluted Amikacin we had used to treat a problem in early summer, but found a syringe with just enough to give him four shots IM every three days. We caught him and noticed the ribs had punctured a hole through the thin skin, but decided not to re-stitch and only applied panalog every time he was caught for his shot.

On day five Topper ate his first food and day seven he was actually pushing the goldfish out of the way. Once he was given his fourth shot and panalog applied, we put him and his buddy back into the little pond where the salt was already raised to the same 0.2% as the quarantine tub.

It has now been 70 days since we removed the tumor and Topper has a small spot where it has taken longer for the hole to heal over the ribs, it may always look like that, but he swims happily with his Koi and goldfish buddies and we've never caught him hanging vertically since. The stitches look like they have worked themselves out, I don't see the long ends there anymore.

Questions have come up as to whether we would do the same thing for one of our Koi. I don't believe they are as durable as a Shubunkin, but yes, if it once again came down to life or death, we would try the same thing again. If it was only a tumor that was unsightly, but non-life threatening then no, we believe in, live and let live.

Since we have gone through this, we have started looking into ways of improving our Koi knowledge. AKCA Koi Health Advisor Program, the UGA Koi Health Course to be held Feb. 17-18 and a new Breeding and Reproduction Program June 9-11 also at UGA are the three that we are considering. All sound like wonderful programs to improve our Koi husbandry and one never knows what the future will hold for our fish and what we will need to do to help them.

As for Topper we don't know if the tumor will come back, but for now he has beaten the odds and we are thankful.

Footnote:
Hi All,
Some of you knew him and some only heard his story. Well, today in the early afternoon Toppers story came to an end. It's eight days before his first anniversary of the surgery to remove the huge tumor that was inside of him. At least he had one more year than he would have. It's still very upsetting to lose him. His body was 9 inches and he had a 6 1/2-inch tail. He was really pretty and people always asked if he was for sale, which of course he was not.
I knew he wasn't himself for two days because he was coming into the main part of the little pond instead of staying in the stream, which was his preferred hangout. I'm not sure why he died and I don't know how old Shubunkins get. We bought him from the pet store 6 or 7 years ago and who knows how old he was then because he was one of the bigger ones for sale. When we had to put Thom [our old cat] to sleep in Jan. we buried him in a special spot and now Topper is beside him.

Sonja

Sonja Kahkola shares with listeners and readers details of the construction proceedures she and Ken undertook creating their more than 3000 gallon quarantine/holding system. For many this system might serve as a primary system, but the Kahkola's needed something special for emergencies with their koi residing in their 17,000 gallon main system.

by Sonja Kahkola

As many of you know, it is very important these days to have a quarantine system when buying new fish or treating problems with existing ones. My husband, Ken and I have a 460 gallon round, blue tub with a rectangular filter filled with media and lava rocks, on a PVC stand. A little prehistoric, but it has been an excellent system for us until last spring when we had a terrible bacterial problem. It wasn't large enough for the size and amount of fish we needed to pull out of the main pond to treat. After that experience, we decided that if something like this were ever to happen again, we would be ready.

Last summer we started by laying out ideas on paper and clearing the area that we had chosen for the facility. It was to be approx. 16' X 8' X 4'. Landscape timbers were our choice of building material since we have them at the back of the big pond and it would keep the back yard tied together.

First we laid a ground layer of 6 timbers [two lengthwise and one on each end] as a guide line and dug a foot into the ground. Next came the trench for the bottom drain. We put it in from the center to about a foot before the right back corner. To try and reduce friction, 45 degree elbows were used instead of 90. This set the pump a little further back, but it ended up better that way. Once the bottom drain pipe was glued and where we wanted it, we put cement around part of it so it would stay solidly in place. A plant pot without holes was used to cover the open pipe to keep dirt and debris from filling it.

To build the walls, we alternated with the length board being the corner and the next layer the width board was the corner. Thin galvanized steel corner and straight brackets were used every second layer to keep things as aligned as possible. They were thin enough not to interfere with the next timbers placed over them. Every third layer, we first drilled then pounded two to three 8" spikes through each 8' section and changed the place where the spikes went in on the next level.

At 4 timbers high we dragged the 20'X 25' 45 ml liner in. At 150 lbs. it's not something you want to be lifting. It came in a roll, so we opened it on the lawn, refolded, and marked the center to make things easier. If you like your lawn, do not leave a liner on it for long. We also installed the bottom drain at this time. Since it was our first time, it was a little difficult making that first cut into the liner knowing that there wasn't a lot room for mistakes. Once it was in, we realized that the floor was level instead of sloped, so we had to back fill to create about a foot of difference.

When the walls were as high as the amount liner would allow and before unfolding it over the top, we installed 4'x8' 3/4" styrofoam insulation and placed it between the timbers and the liner. To support the areas were we figured the water pressure would be the greatest, we started with a 4x4x8 post at the center of each end and three along the length and fastened them to the timbers with large bolts. Later we found we needed two more for each corner. A post hole digger would have been a great asset, but we only had shovels, so our posts went between 2 ½ and 3 feet into the ground. On hind site, I would have liked to put them 4' into the ground. As I held the post straight, Ken poured an 80 lb. bag of cement into the hole. While he got a second bag, I used the hose to soak the first one. Some of the wider holes, we added an extra half bag. We then left it to dry for a few days before filling the tops of the holes with dirt.

Finally things were ready for some water. As it filled we smoothed the sides and folded the corners as neatly as possible. Once we had about 18" of water, we stopped filling and put in the bulk heads for the surface skimmer and the over flow pipe. The skimmer pipe and bottom drain Y together before the pump. This then goes to the filter, which right now is a Calpump 4000, but it may change to a bubble bead in the future. From the filter, the pipe runs to an 18 Watt UV and that runs to an up flow 55 gallon barrel full of filter media with a milk crate at the bottom so the water can flow evenly through the media and a 50 lb. bag of crushed coral at the top. The water then flows out of a 3" pipe back into the system. A total of 7 ball valves were added in the following places, one for the skimmer before the Y with the bottom drain, one for the bottom drain before the Y with the skimmer, one between the pump and filter, one for the pipe that with the pipe between the pump and filter [for draining the system quickly], another to control the amount of water that diverts to the UV, and finally one before the barrel and one underneath it [for easier cleaning].

Once we had it filled with water for a week, we cut the excess liner, folded and tacked it down with roofing nails. The longer the water was in there, the wider the center was bowing out. There was a difference of over 2 ½" , so we drained it down and waited for it to come back to it's original place and then put two 2x 4's across and screwed them to the tops of the 4x4 posts. Once filled again, we no longer had a problem. The only thing left to do was cut to size and attach the 2x10x16's for top boards. We hadn't planned on cutting them, but with the 2x4's across the top, we had to.

For the final touches, we stained the wood with the same stain as our timbers out back and the bridge over our stream. The metal post from the old dismantled satellite dish was sanded and painted, and to get more height we slid a 4" round post which fit perfectly inside. This was where we attached the point of the triangle shade cloth and the other two points snapped to screw eyes on each end of our shed. We also made a PVC frame that follows the top boards and across the 2x4s and attached netting to it with zip ties. It is held in place along the back with brackets that allow it to be lifted up from the front side.

The water depth in the center is 4' and 3' at the sides. We used a flow meter on the hose, so we know it holds 3200 gallons of water. I placed a couple of small pieces of duct tape [which are still amazingly there] at the 1600 gallon mark so when we need to medicate, all we do is close the valve to the skimmer, drain down to the tape and only use half the amount of medication. The system seemed a little bare, so Ken cut Koi shapes out of plywood and painted them with Marine Paint as a Kohaku, Showa, Shiro Utsuri and Sanke. They measure 30" long and have a fin span of 18". Right now we have three, 11" and two, 18" Koi in there and it's taken a month for the ammonia and nitrite levels to read 0. An experienced builder may say that such a set up can't work, but so far it seems to be working well.

These are the materials that we used.
1. Cimarron Sequence Value Flo Series Pump- 1/8 HP, 3600 GPH, max.head of 12', 160 Watts and 2 Amps.
2. Calpump 4000 filter.
3. 18 Watt Aquatic Emperor UV.
4. 20x25 45 ml. liner.
5. 84 landscape timbers.
6. 16 4x4x8 posts.
7. 3 2x10x12 boards.
8. 2 2x4x10 boards.
9. 35 bags of 80 lb. cement [our soil is like beach sand, so we wanted to make it solid]. 10. 1 4x8 round post with a top screwed into it to match our bridge.
11. 6 4x8x3/4 styrofoam insulation.
12. 1 55 gal. barrel that was already plumbed from a failed attempt at filtration on earlier
project.
13. 3" bottom drain.
14. 1 surface skimmer.
15. 3" PVC from the bottom drain to the 2" ball valve.
16. Everything else was 2" PVC straight pipe and flex pipe, except for having to use 1½" pipe between the pump to filter and filter to UV set up. That's the largest the Calpump fittings will accept.
17. Miscellaneous items like the bolts used attach the posts to the timbers, outdoor wood screws, 8" spikes, corner and straight plates, roofing nails, clamps, and PVC parts [elbows, joints, screw eyes, etc.] were used as needed.
It has taken us from last summer around August to this spring around the third week in February when we added the first 2 fish, to complete this project, but it's finally done. Who says amateurs can't build a working system for their Koi?