John Hawley

Forget that refrigerator for mother’s Christmas gift. What she really needs is the 3600SEQ12 Professional combo including external pond pump with priming pot, check valve, and strainer to replace her submersible koi pond pump system. And that is what she happily received compliments of her loving son and AZ Ponds (www.azponds.com) one of my advertisers on the “Koi Club of the Air” show. Okay, so this purchase made one of my marketing partners happy along with mother and the fish, but shouldn’t everyone in one’s circle of contacts make out well at Christmas?

Yea, I’ll admit she was expecting a new refrigerator to replace a hand-me-down she received after Grandmother Josephine’s passing nearly 20 years ago, but who knows which is the best choice especially for something women are so particular about anyhow? When she said she really didn’t want one with a television in the door or icemaker did she really mean the opposite? Who can tell with women?

Anyhow this external pond pump is what she really needed with a flow rate of 600 to 3200 gallons per hour that will pull water from the 1000-gallon pond and push into the biofilter where it is then gravity fed back into the pond. Yea, it sounds like a gift for a guy, but you see regardless of the temperature or weather conditions dear mother Nellie pulls the existing submersible pump from the pond each week to examine and insure there is no debris binding the impeller along with cleaning the pump strainer basket. Not only is this something of a hassle, but this week her fingers were cracking from holiday food preparation and exposure to the pond water could actually put her at risk of infection. See, I had to buy her this pump to protect her health! Yea, I could clean it for her, but this is her hobby as well as mine and she enjoys taking care of the ponds and fish and she does an excellent job of it. Heck, my presents from her were signed by her and the poodle (Missy), the birds (Herman the cockatiel, and two parakeets), along with the koi and goldfish (too plentiful to name here even though many have names).

Another advantage of the external filter is that there won’t be a risk of electrocuting her or the fish if the pump shorted out. Sure ground fault interrupting (GFI) fixtures should always be used around water even with an external pump, but now she has made one more step toward becoming a SERIOUS ponder. And heck why not? It was only a month ago at the North Florida Koi Show that she won a first place certificate for her Hikari Mujimono Size 3 yellow olgon koi, and a third place certificate for her Hikari Mujimono Size 2 matsuba koi. Heck she has thousands of dollars worth of fish in her ponds now including several hundred dollars worth in three small fry purchased at that show from Blackwater Creek Koi Farms (www.koisale.com; who also happens to be one of our “Koi Club of the Air” advertiser!).

For the next phase of my Christmas gift giving I will install the pump, priming pot, check valve, and strainer if someone will read the instructions. Then, over the next several months I’ll dig that 3000-4000 gallon pond behind the pool and replace that small several hundred gallon goldfish pond there where we built a big waterfall that was featured in a KOI USA magazine photo recently along with one of her predatory egrets. At that point, I’ll buy “us” a similar external pump system, and sophisticated Ultima II pressurized filtration system with the capacity for easy backwash cleaning procedures versus the laborious media mat cleaning she presently undertakes every few months with the main pond system. If she didn’t have so many fish in that main pond it wouldn’t be as critical, but the biomass of her total current fish load in three pond systems with some 75 fish ranging from a few inches up to two and a half feet is significant considering their waste production.

Meanwhile the refrigerator purchase is on hold,…unless I find one with an aquarium in the door panel.