New Pond Questions

[confusion]

I just gave my landscaper the go-ahead to landscape my back yard, and part of that will be a koi pond next to a patio. The current plan is for the pond to be 8'x10'x3' deep. This will be my first pond experience, so I'm interested on getting perspective on what is important. It seems like it would be a better idea to have it longer and narrower, than square, and to have it deeper. I'm already thinking that it should be 4' deep, but is that deep enough? Should I have an area that is deeper, and an area that is shallow?

I've read that koi should be stocked at no more than 3 fish per 1000 gallons. My pond (depending on the ultimate size) will be somewhere between 1500 and 2500 gallons. I see many ponds (including pictures in these forums) that seem to be more heavily stocked than that. Is that a good stocking number?

Is it OK to stock some goldfish in with the koi? Would they follow the same stocking guidelines?

I've read that the bio filter starts dying off during the winter. Does that mean that I'm in for cycling the pond each spring? Should I attempt to heat the pond? I don't think it would be so bad, as I'm in the southern US (Atlanta), and it doesn't get extremely cold, but it will dip below freezing a fair bit.

I'm sure I will have more questions as we get closer to being completed.

TIA

 

[GoldLenny]

Can you make it a little longer... maybe more rectangular? 10' is kind of short for a koi pond. 6' x 12' x 4' deep (with an average depth of 30") would make the ponds volume around 1,300 gallons. If you could go 6' x 18' long, that would be much better since Koi should get very large... nearly 3' long so a 10' long pond would not give them much swimming room before they have to turn around.

If you only have room for that size, maybe you should re-think getting Koi and stick with goldfish only. If you like the looks of Koi, you could get some Sarasa goldfish which have koi-like markings.

It's not good to mix Koi and goldfish as they can interbreed and you end up with mutts in your pond.

If you go with a shallower area and a deeper area and add a waterfall, put the waterfall on the shallow end to get a better ecology as the water flows to the deeper end where the intake to the pump/filter should be located.