USA Koi - One of the Largest Selections of Japan's Most Premier Koi and Koi Accessories

USA Koi operating from our new facility on Fish Pond Road in Glassboro, New Jersey.

The new facility will give us some room to grow into a greenhouse and plenty of display ponds.

There is one "pond" on the property already, ok well more of a bog garden that started out as a water garden that was never cleaned out. So I guess that makes it a back hoe, gunnite, filters and koi away from being an actual koi pond but its a start anyway.

Please stop by and check out at the new place in the spring. All of our phone numbers and e-mail will stay the same, the only thing that will change is our mailing address.

The main building at our new facility is 60' X 60'. Half will be the fish house the other half will be used for a dry goods area and some other stuff. There are 4 ponds inside the building and there will be several display ponds outside.

The ponds are made of wood, custom vinyl liners and steel reinforcing.

Each of the ponds uses a 4" Spindrifter Bottom Drain, Patio Ponds Cyclone 5,000 gravity fed filter system.

The bottom drains are installed through the concrete using 4" plumbing to the filters. The insides of the ponds were lined with 1/2" thick foam for some insulation and also to help protect the liners. Each liner is custom fitted and made from 22-mil FDA approved black vinyl. I can get custom liners to fit anything so send me an email if you are interested in pricing.

Just before the liner has been set.

Liner in but still no koi.

Finally the koi are in their new home at least until they are sold and shipped or picked up.

I'll update these pictures after the next phase of finishing the tanks and decking.

We have finished the coping along the tops of the tankss and also enclosed them with acrylic shields or fencing.

Just so there isn't any problem finding the new shop we put in a new sign.

So after we have the machine in place and we are ready to dig I look over at the neighbor's house and wonder if this is the right place for a pond?

This is where our first display pond will go.

Ok the hole has been dug. I missed taking pictures of the hole but after it was dug I had the gunnite guys come and flash coat the inside with gunnite to prevent it from caving in during the heavy rains we had been having.

The pond will be about 18" above the ground but from the pictures it looks like it is about 3' above the ground. Initially rebar is hammered into the ground outside the hole. Then thin strips of wood are attached to the rebar to make the top of the form. At this point they are loosely leveled using a very cool laser level.

You can get a good look at the rough hole, flash coating of gunning and also the rough plumbing of the bottom drains.

You can see in the first picture where I have the Rhino II bottom drains rough plumed in. Ok I went away for 1 day and the rebar installer came and efficiently installed my rebar but not before removing the bottom drains.

Ok I'm skipping ahead some but you can see from the last few pictures that rebar is bent to fit and installed. It is tied together using mechanics wire on about 8" centers. After the rebar is installed peg board is inserted behind the rebar against the sides of the dirt hole and held off the rebar 4" or so by brick spacers.

It is all framed up, rebar in place and ready for plumbing.

I'm looking from the filter house into the pond thinking about how easy it would have been to plumb this if the guy installing the rebar would have left my bottom drains in place!!

Brick spacers are used to give about a 4" space between the peg board outer frame and the rebar. Every few squares the rebar is tied.

Just a few more of the same.

On the left is the filter house that will hold two Nexus Eazy 300 systems, a Fluidart Challenger 60 and 40, all the Performance Pro Pumps, Aqua Ultra Lights, and Medo air pumps. On the right is a small pond attached to the front of the main pond that will recirculate through a bead filter.

I'm using a Savio skimmer, this is the full size version not the compact. The rebar had to be cut so the skimmer could be installed. Looking from the back side you can see that the skimmer has had a 3" bulk head fitting installed in the bottom and from there the water can be gravity fed or set up as a flooded suction to a pump. This is not how Savio intended the skimmer to work but this is the best way to get maximum flow with an external pump.

Here is the skimmer wired into place. The bottom drains are now properly installed under the rebar.

The level will be set on the drains just before the gunite is applied.

These are the returns from the Nexus Eazy units and Challenger bead filters.

I've pulled all of the return lines between the pegboard and the rebar. There are upper and lower water returns. There will be two returns from each Nexus unit and two returns from the mid level intake and shimmer equaling 6 returns total.

Here are the returns with the ends placed on them to help direct the water.

Ok lets see, two 4" pipes for the bottom drains, two 1/2" lines for the diffuser drains, six 2" lines for the returns and one 2" line for the midlevel intake. It's actually not that bad because we had plenty of space and clearly marked everything so we knew where it was supposed to go.

This is the small pond on the front side of the main pond. I just wanted to point out a little swimming pool technology here. It was plumbed with two inlets going to one pipe. This is important in a swimming pool or spa because if you sit or stand on the inlet you don't get stuck to it, water will be pulled from the other instead. This is not really necessary for a water garden or koi pond but worth pointing out. There isn't any difference between the black and white flex pipe although I prefer the black it doesn't matter it will be in cased in gunite.

All plumbed up and ready for gunite.

Gunite guys like to start early. This will be a two part job. The main pond and part of the smaller attached pond will be shot first. The waterfall for the smaller attached pond and the filter house will be shot second.

This is the compressor truck. It generates 150psi through a 2" hose while pushing a cement and sand mixture.

This is the gunite truck. The truck has two bins inside of it, one holds the cement and the other holds sand. Sand and cement are kept seperate while they are in the truck but mixed just before they go into the hopper. From the hopper they are pumped to the nozzel where the water is added as it hits the rebar and frames.

Ok this is the last look before the gunite is applied. We have had so much rain this summer, which was evident by the water in the bottom of the pond.

Hopper unit. Nozzel/tatoos not required.

The difference between gunite, shotcrete and cement is gunite doesn't have stone mixed into it and the water isn't mixed into the sand/cement mixture until it gets to the end of the nozzle. Shotcrete is usually concrete that arrives onsite in a typical cement mixer and is pumped or sprayed similarly to gunite. Cement usually has stone in it.

The sand and cement mixture is dumped into the hopper unit and pumped by air to the end of the nozzle; it is dry at this point and doesn't get water mixed into it until it gets to the end of the nozzle.

The main pond will have a small pond and waterfall on the front side. The small pond and waterfall will not actually be connected to the main pond. In these pictures you can see where they are filling in between both ponds.

Now the two ponds are seperated by at least 12" of gunite. After the gunite is sprayed on it is some what smoothed out.

The nozzle weighs about 30lbs or so when it is not turned on and when it is turned on the air pressure is forceful enough so you only have to guide it in the direction you want it to go.

The gunite is shot in sections a few feet up at a time. Because the pond is 7' or so in total height scaffolding was used to get the finish guys to the top. The scaffolding looked like a typical saw horse but with only one end and the other end was placed into a hole that was carved out of the gunite that was filled back in after the scaffolding was removed.

A cement and sand mixture is mixed with water at 150psi at the end of the nozzel.

The top or beam is checked again for level using the lazer level.

These guys truly busted their hump for me on this job and I appreciate it. Spraying gunite is a loud and extremely dirty job on a nice day but combine it with 98° and 95% humidity and it becomes a real tough job.

Across the beam it is about 10" wide givung about 5" of gunite on either side of the rebar.

Just to make sure there wouldn't be any bonding issues with the pond sealer I was going to use we applied a rough trowel finish.

At this point I would call the pond "rough finished". We still have to spray the filter house and after the pond sits for 20 or 30 days I'll apply the rubberized sealer.

It looks cramped from the picture but it is not as bad as it looks. I made a small miscalculation on the filter house ok a 24" or so miscalculation but gunite at this point is cheap.

The mistake I made was on the filter house depth. I didn't have the Nexus filters on hand when I laid out the plans for the filter house and I didn't want to make the floor to low or two high so I left it with plenty of room to fill in.

With the filter house floor smoothed out just about finishes the filter house. This is the front side of the main pond showing the waterfall and where we will have some nice stone work done.

The waterfall into the front pond was shot at two different times. First was the pond and second was the basin and top portion of the waterfall.

This is the front and back side of the Savio skimmer.

Things are really starting to shape up. With the stone work done on the waterfall and small pond we move on to finish the coping.

This small pond is not actually connected to the main pond and is more for show then anything else.

This picture shows the relationship between the pond and filter area. The main pond is *about* 25'L X 12'W X 7'D.

After the gunite has had a chance to dry we started to prepair the inside surface. The extra pipe was cut off of the returns and the surface of the gunite was smoothed out around them.

At the same time we were prepairing the gunite surface I started to lay out the filter house to make sure everything would fit. It looks like most of the stuff will fit in but I might have to go on a diet.

BEWARE of DOG! BEWARE of MOTH!.

The Nexus filters fit fine without any plumbing attached but somthing tells me it isn't going to be quite that easy.

The gunite was finished with a "rough trowel" finish which means it was smoothed out but not quite as smooth as your new basement floor but maybe more like your new piece of sidewalk. I went through the whole pond with a "rubbing stone" and knocked off any high or really rough spots. Also any loose pieces of gunite or mortar from the stonework were removed with a scraper as if you were scraping tile up from the floor.

After the gunite was prepaired I started to cut in the important parts with the sealer. The product I decided to use is called Sani-Tred. It is applied in 2 coats with a finish thickness of 12 to 14mil.

I used muratic acid around all the returns, skimmers and bottom drains. This cleaned the gunite and also cleaned and softened the pvc on the bottom drains, skimmer and returns making it easier for the sealer to adhere to them. Each was also sanded with 60 grit paper where ever the sealer was going to adhere.

It was at about this point I realized I was applying way more then what I had so I started to work more of the Sani-Tred in and out a little better.

This product bonds to the gunite but it doesn't fill cracks or gaps so it is necessary to add their filler inbetween coats.

In these pictures I have added the filler which bonds to the top coat of Sani-Tred. All cracks, gaps and low spots were taken care of inbetween coats.

The is the finished product sealed and smoothed almost ready for water. I have used several different products to seal ponds and this has been my favorite to use to date.

It is all coming now. With the stone work all finished we painted the gunite rather then stone or stucco to save a little money.

I have replaced enough knife/slide/gate/guillotine valves to know they leak under pressure after time. The price for 4" ball valves is a small one to pay to avoid changing out knife later.

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I used two 57-watt Aqua Ultraviolet UV lights per Nexus filter unit plus I'm going to add a 120-watt unit or so to the Fluid Art Challenger bead filter.

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As soon as it is filled all the way and I'm able to do some landscaping I'll post a few of the finished project.

We started to do some landscaping around the new pond.

Along with the landscaping comes a new entry way and a new pond.

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