Pond in a box

So you want an instant Koi pond?

Well, now you can have one! Our PondInnABox is an ideal temporary Koi pond holding facility, or a starter, scalable aquaculture system. Installed correctly and with some care there is no reason the PondInnABox should not last you many years.

 

Pond In A Box
Pond In A Box - using Happy Koi Tube Filters to show you options.

 

Happy Koi's pond in a box is a package deal for a 10 000 litre instant Koi pond.It comes complete with everything you need - all you need to do is find a relatively flat space of about 4.5m by 3.5m, set it up and add water.

Indicative pricing is around R24 500, subject to variations in component costs. And we don't skimp either... you get...

  1. A 10 000 litre  uber strong canvas pond (3.5m diameter, 1.2m height) complete with net
  2. A DC Vari Speed water pump (24W to 85W, 4kl to 10kl/hr) .
  3. A 800mm prefilter fitted with 63mm unions
  4. A 30W U/V steriliser
  5. 350l bio filter complete with 100 litres of  moving bed bio filter, with air ring, large plates, gravity plates, 63mm overflow and double union 50mm sump drain.
  6. A 60l/min diaphragm air pump to drive the moving bed plus an airstone in the pond itself
  7. All the pipe and fittings to connect everything up, including rubber wunder flanges and top quality valves. We even include the glue.

Once up and running you have a system capable of housing a good number of Koi from small to large.

The Pond in a Box is also an ideal aquaculture starter kit if you want to get into the realm of fish farming. The system can be upgraded to run as is with a carrying capacity of 30kg to40kg/1000 litres of water for Tilapia (or any ohter species for that matter) by upgrading the filtration. In this case the system will set you back around R34k as the filtration is substantially upgraded.

Maintenance is straight forward. The mechanical filter only requires two small brushes to be hosed down every few days depending on the load. The biological filter simply requires a quick tap from the flush valve for a few seconds once a week or so to remove any solids build up.

Maintenance of the system can be fully automated and you can drive this from your iPad! Automation starts off at around R10k for the first system and drops to around R7k per system thereafter.

The system is efficient from a power point of view. Airlifts and or maximum efficiency low power pumps can be deployed to further improve power efficiency with a minor reconfiguration of the mechanical filtration stages.

These systems lend themselves to ideal quarantine ponds or hospital ponds for your Koi collection. Smaller systems can be configured on request.

Pond In A Box

PondInnABox up and running using low power pump

 

Tunnels

Tunnels are not really necessary for Koi unless you want warm water for your Koi in winter.

For Tilapia however, in order to harvest two crops a year you will need to enclose the pond in a tunnel. Small tunnels suitable for individual systems like this are available on request. Larger tunnels for multiple systems are also available on request.

 

Viability

30kg of fish per 1000 litres of water means each pond is capable of delivering 0.6 tons of fish per year. The upgraded high rate system running at 50kg per 1000 litres of water will produce 1 ton of fish per year.

The system is sufficiently cost efficient to be scaled up simply by adding additional ponds. Ten systems can give you 10 tons of fish per year and 100 systems 100 tons, which is a reasonable start towards a commercially viable operation. Significant further operational cost efficiencies can be harnessed by maintaining fish kg densities by spiltting grow outs between smaller fish and larger fish across a number of systems. But check out the aqua culture section of the website for more information if this is your interest.