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Killer Koi

A collection of high quality backyard wildlife photos.
Published by in Monster Fish ·
Killer Koi ate my formerly beautiful tropical water lilies...

Okay, so Koi fish don’t really eat lily roots, so why the heck did they destroy my plants?  The best answers that I found and that made sense to me and my application, were that the fish were just digging for food.

Frog on Lily pad pond

As you can see above, I had some plush green lily pads at one time.  But, here is what the killer Koi have left me with:



I am going to build a net around the pot so that it will help prevent the fish from destroying the roots.  I will keep you updated as to the progress/status of the two tropical lily bulbs that I found floating in the pond.

Protect Lilies from KoiFirst, I am lining the plant baskets with  weed fabric as the koi constantly pick at the side of these pots and blow the dirt on to the pond floor.  This was the only material that I had readily avaiable and I didn't find anything sugesting that it might contain chemicles or anything harmful.


Protect Liliy roots from killer KoiNext, I filled the pot to the top with the dirt/clay mixture that I used on my other plants successfully.  I filled it with soil all the way to the top because I did not want a gap between the plant growth and the netting which I am going to cover this with.  Leaving a gap might allow growth to get trapped under the netting which would just create a different problem.


Use Netting to protect Lily roots from killer KoiNext, I cut a piece of plastic netting large enough to cover the entire top of the plant basket.  I inserted the lily bulb from the top down through the netting so that I wouldn't break off all of the existing leaves.  My other bulb had been completely stripped so I just buried it top up near the surface and directly under a net opening.

DIY Koi Proof PlantingNext, I used nylon zip ties to secure the net to the basket.  I might have over done it with the zip ties, but I wanted to ensure that the netting did not lift wide enough to defeat the entire purpose.




Finally, I trimmed the netting and clipped the zip ties short and placed it back in the pond.  I will post some updates soon.  Thanks for reading!

Protect Pond Plants from Killer Koi



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