With their flashy scales and vibrant coloring, koi fish are beautiful creatures to keep swimming in your pond. They add life and color to your garden environment, and you’ll have fun watching them glide through the water and surface for koi food.

However, there’s a proper way to take care of koi fish that ensures they will have the best quality of life. Learn how to care for koi fish, including how to feed them with premium koi feed, and you’ll help them stay healthy and thriving for years to come, as they can truly live to be old geezers. (The average life span of a koi fish is 25-35 years!)

The type of premium fish food you give your koi will directly impact their health, along with how much you feed them.

Keeping Your Koi Healthy

Depending on how active/inactive your koi are, they will need correspondingly more/less food. Koi are most active in warm water, between 65 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit. As such, they will require multiple feedings and longer feeding times each day when the temperature is at or above this level. On the other hand, in cold water temperatures (anything under 60 degrees Fahrenheit), the metabolism of koi fish slows considerably, which means they need little food.

In order to truly thrive, not just survive, koi fish require a diet tailored to their environment and activity level. When they are active, koi fish need premium fish feed with a higher protein content, longer feeding times, and more feedings daily.

The Perfect Koi Fish Environment

Along with the best koi fish food, your pretty swimmers need the right environment – good water quality, pond size and depth, and extras.

Water Environment

Water quality is vital to the health of any fish, including koi. The perfect koi pond will be clean, filtered, oxygenated (whether through mechanical means, like a pump, or through natural means, like a waterfall), and deep enough that only the surface will freeze in winter. The pond should get at least partial shade in the summer and should be populated with plant life to help with oxygenation, provide hiding places, and give your fish an alternate source of food.

Pond Depth

Pond depth, in particular, is incredibly important if you plan to keep your koi happily swimming in it all year.

Not only does it need to be deep enough that the lower depths don’t freeze, but you also need to keep the surface from being totally covered in ice, as this allows nitrogen gas (from fish waste) to exchange with the air.

When you understand how to care for koi fish, you’ll be better equipped to keep them vibrant, healthy, and thriving for years, even decades.

A huge part of keeping a pond full of healthy koi is feeding them the best koi fish food. Order economical koi food from America’s Best Koi Food today and give your fish the right diet to help them thrive.