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Koi, Fish Ponds, Water Gardens and the Moon
Koi Growing - A Popular Hobby and Some Deep Beliefs

by Brett Fogle
From Pond Stuff, newsletter of http://www.macarthurwatergardens.com of Baton Rouge, Florida
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What does the moon have to do with water gardening? Well, it seems there is more to it than you would first think.

The name of the ancient city of Jericho, the oldest city in the world, is named after the moon - "Jerih". People have noticed centuries ago how the moon has influence on the tides and on any large body of water. The city is at the foot of the Dead Sea, actually a pond, which has no fish and almost no plants growing about it. But it also sits at the foot of two rivers, the Jordan River and a smaller local stream coming down from Jerusalem. A nearby castle was built with a water garden but the building was abandoned when an earthquake hit a few thousands of years ago. A water garden in the Judean desert? The answer is YES. These ancient people understood all about water gardening, biological diversity, ecological balancing and fish breeding.

I am telling this because it seems strange when we hear of ancient Japanese water gardening beliefs stating that the full moon is the best time for breeding koi or other water garden pond fish. But if you think of it, it shouldn't surprise us if, just as we feel the difference between day and night using our available senses - the eyes, so it should be for fish, who live in the pond and water garden and feel the strong power of monthly (notice the word month comes from moon) changes.

Now these same fish, a few generations removed, are in our water garden, making it a spectacle for everyone to see, and these fish bring with them their set of beliefs and feelings which we like to call "instincts". They feel when the moon is full, and they show it in your water garden.

When koi breed both the male and female are extracting the future generation, the male giving off sperm and the female giving off eggs. So you would think that they could do this without ever touching each other. But in fact, a male, and many times two koi males are involved in the process called spawning. They push the female towards the end of the pond, sandwiching her between them, and helping her release the eggs. The female koi has a distinctive smell which causes the males to behave this way, and many times the female is hurt badly. So much that the female should be taken to a separate pond, or else a continuous attack may ensue. Once the spawning is over, the fish begin eating their eggs. There can be over 50,000 fish in a usual hatch, done outside the water garden in a special tank set aside for this. Japanese fish growers throw away over half of the hatched fish.

It is interesting to note that Joshua Bin-Nun, who according to the Bible captured the city of Jericho, is the son of a fish: Nun being the ancient word for fish, and Bin-Nun - son of Nun. The letter N which like the rest of the alphabet originated in Phoenicia (today Lebanon) was shaped like a fish and pronounced Nun. The word Nun (pronounced 'noon'), is still in use in various places in the Middle East as a fish. The ancient letter S was drawn in the the shape of a fishbone and pronounced Sameh, which to this day in Arabic means fish. So you never know, when you are looking at a fish or its history. But you can visit these ancient water gardens and visit the ancient ponds.

Brett Fogle is the owner of MacArthur Water Gardens and several pond-related websites including macarthurwatergardens.com and pond-filters-online.com.
He also publishes a free monthly newsletter called PondStuff! with a reader circulation of over 6,000 pond owners. To sign up for the free newsletter and receive a complimentary 'New Pond Owners Guide' for joining, visit http://www.macarthurwatergardens.com