since when cant koi tolerate warm water?

[señor_pescados_felices]

I keep reading about people advising about all these bad things that happen with koi in temps over 75, such as over stimulation of slime coat production and metabolism increase through the roof,wreaking havok on water quality in even a large aquarium setting.Sometimes its said they stop eating over 80 degrees.

This doesn't seem right to me, my pond right now is 80 and I'm not sure how long it has been,maybe since mid April.It will only get warmer,sometimes pushing 85 by summer,and does not drop down below 80 until mid October.Not to mention I live in norcal so you pond keepers down in socal must be experiencing AT LEAST the same.

There are allot of koi ponds here in Norcal and I know as you go south (and warmer) the pond count increases.Ive felt allot of them and almost all of them were about the same temp as mine in the summer.

Also I go to Vegas quite often and all the koi ponds around there are all hot in the summer I've felt the water to see if they were chilling it but they are all at least 80 in the summer except maybe the huge one in the flamingo but even that felt 75ish.

So how come whenever someone posts about keeping koi in with their tropical monsters others freak and everyones like "no dont do it, dont do it, koi cant hang with that heat!"?Except of course when a certain much respected arowana keeper sometimes posts pics of his tank which have an occasional koi,then nobody says anything.

I bring this up because Ive been putting alot of thought into it lately.I can get a great deal on some imported japanese koi about 4" but the koi in my pond are getting pretty big and in the summer time I put a few monsters out there like the oscars....so I am seriously considering putting the koi in with my silver aro grow outs for about a year or so.

Tank is a 6'x2'x3' kept at about 80 with an fx5,a 30g wet/dry and an fb900 fluidized sand bed filter.

discuss.....

 

[FSM]

If they do fine in 80 degree pond water, they should do fine in 80 degree tank water...right? I wouldn't, but thats just because I don't like koi.

 

[WJC05]

My koi pond gets at least 85 degrees in the heat of the summer. Never lost a koi and they always keep eating just as normal.. Not quite sure what to think about the warm water stuff...

 

[jcardona1]

i think its a little different with a pond. thats why they should be at least 3ft deep. during the summer, if you place your hand in the water it will feel very warm. but if you keep going, past about 1ft, you will notice the water temp drops considerably and by 3ft, the water is cool, even on hot summer days. it will take extremely HOT outside temps to heat a pond thats 3ft deep past 80 degrees.

A deep pond plus lots of aeration will keep the bottom of the pond cool and the koi will be happy. i wouldnt recommend keeping koi in a 80 degree tank. Theyre a cold water fish

 

[señor_pescados_felices]

Only thing is my pond is above ground, cinder blocks with a pond liner.Its 3' deep exactly but I don't notice much temp fluctuation even all the way down at the bottom,its stays at a pretty stable temp the whole pond through.

But once it starts getting 110,115,120 outside the temp stays at around 85 or more.I have a digital thermometer on it.Once it hits 85 I put the hose in it and let it trickle all day,adding a bit of pond prime every few hours.

Point is my Koi are in 80+ temps 7 months out of the year and some are 8 years old.

 

[James B.]

I don't think it's a case of it can't be done, it's just not the way they were meant to live. They still can and will live, eat, grow etc. in the warmer water but in the wild they come from cooler water's.
I look at it the same as African Cichlids, they say they need special water parameters to thrive but I have seen countless tanks of mixed African and American Cichlids together all living happily and breeding so they can't really need the special water that much, it's just their preferred habitat.
Most of the people I know who say koi and Gold fish will not live in cold water are the same people who look down on me because I have tanks not a huge pond in my back yard and I keep a tank of hybrid's instead of all my tanks being pure fish like they would keep.
Too each their own I say and as long as you are not hurting the fish and they are healthy, too hell with what other people say. But if you can see they are in distress and just don't can thats a different story.
I can't see them having that hard a time in the tank vs the pond, the one thing they might have trouble with in the tank is at night, even outside and above ground the pond will drop in temp late at night where a heated tank will not.

 

[Fry]

I believe the term "coldwater" is misleading. Being able to tolerate and enjoy cooler waters doesn't mean they can't tolerate or thrive in warmer water.

 

[moto110]

I had some baby 2" koi in a tank that was about 75- 80 degrees and they did fine. They just did not grow at all. I took the heater out and they grew like half an inch in a month.

 

[señor_pescados_felices]

So everybody except one person thinks it fine?

 

[jcardona1]

I think they'll be fine too, I was just saying that I'm sure they would do better off in cooler water. Afterall, I live in CA and my koi live in warmer water for a good part of the year.

And I speak from experience about this. We lost several koi a few summers ago when we had 110+ degree weather here. Our pumped crapped out overnight and the waterfall stopped running. Woke up in the morning and lots of big koi were dead. Hot weather and no oxygen = dead koi

But yeah, I'm sure the koi will be fine as they can tolerate a wide range of conditions.