Alfa Koi is all about Koi. We're passionate about our fish and we hope that this passion reflects on our website that we work hard on to make as useful as possible for you.
Alfa Koi has been around now for over a decade. It feels like yesterday, but we're still here to help you get the most ofut of your Koi keeping journey - and to this end we'll bend over backwards for you, our valued customer.
The idea behind Alfa Koi is to help and teach you what you need to know about keeping Koi. We find that sadly it is often ignorance that kills more Koi than anything else and whilst that may lead to increased fish sales for ourselves we're not about selling fish for the sake of making money on this basis!
Rather, we're about what it takes to keep a high class quality collection of Nishikigoi. Whether these be ordinary pond fish or show stoppers doesn't matter one iota to us. The life of the animal is what we value and hence we take our hobby very seriously.
It all starts with your Koi pond and your filtration of course. There are any number of ways to build Koi ponds but the most important thing for you to remember is that advice given by the same people building your Koi pond may not be aligned with your best interests. Energy guzzling swimming pool pumps and sand filters with 'Koi' sand in them have no place in the modern Koi pond - quite aside from the fact that such systems cost a fortune to run, they are also a pain in your ass to maintain (both things that your Koi pond builder does not have to live with).
We know of only one way to keep Koi. And that is the proper way. There are no shortcuts - if there were, we would be using them. Alfa Koi is primarily interested in what it takes to keep Koi in an environment conducive to THEIR long term well being and sadly this may not be in alignment with your short term budgetary constraints (which in every case will end up costing you far more you can possibly imagine).
That said, keeping Koi properly need not be frighteningly eye bleedingly expensive. Done properly an excellent Koi pond can cost a lot less that you may think. You need to appreciate that the wide and diverse range of opinions on how they should be built is precisely because they are COMPLEX and difficult entities to construct. Do not make the mistake of thinking they are glorified swimming pools - they are anything else but.
If you do things correctly it is surprising over the life of a Koi pond just what you can spend on it. Over a five year time frame the way we design and run our Koi ponds will cost you substantially less in running costs than "cheaper" systems, and can in fact pay for the entire cost of the Koi pond itself! We kid you not. Over longer time frames the savings can become monstrous.
We do so without taking liberties and shortcuts. If there were any shortcuts available to Koi keepers we'd be using them ourselves.
So the choice is yours. You either do Koi ponds properly, or YOU are the one who will suffer the consequences of having a pond that does not and will not ever work. A Koi pond is a permanent structure, and the only way to change it is with a jack hammer. Don't go there...
Since a Koi pond can cost the same as a new kitchen or a modest new car (or even in some cases a not so modest) new car, why on earth would you spend that kind of money without doing your homework properly? Research is free and it will reward you in spades.
For clarification, we don't build Koi ponds. We design them and the filtration that goes on them so that the two work seamlessly and properly. The result is a Koi pond conducive to housing world class quality collections of Koi in them. We can and do however work with builders to ensure your Koi pond success. Note that we charge our time for this accordingly.
YOU have to live with the Koi pond YOU have built, not us. USE us to ensure it is done right!
Getting two or three quotes on how to build a Koi pond is a start, but getting pricing on two or three different filtration systems is far more sensible! Sand filters, swimming pool pumps and Koi sand for instance, as we have alluded to above, are OUT for a Koi pond. Technology has moved on since the 1970's believe it or not, as have Koi keeping practises.