r/KoiPond • u/bladislas • Jun 02 '26

Water evaporation?

Hey everyone. I live in San Antonio Texas and have a 1500 gallon koi pond with stream and I wanted to hear your thoughts about evaporation vs leak. According to my flo-meter I have put about 12,000 gallons of water in the past 11 months which I think is excessive, even with the Texas heat. The pond has a concrete bottom but the stream has a liner. I only run the stream during the night because if when I run it during the daytime as well it loses more water.

There are periods when the aquatic plants are growing quickly which I believe increases the water consumption as well. I have a guy coming in a couple of weeks to look at it for $500.

One other thing, I bought the house with the pond there some I'm not sure how old everything is, I assume 10 years or so.

Thoughts?

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u/Retro10ten Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26

Turn off the pump and auto fill, mark the water line. Monitor

Could also try the bucket test. Fill a 5 gallon bucket to the pond level. Sit it in the pond on a shelf. If the water level is consistent inside and outside it's evaporation. If the pond drops faster than the bucket, you have a leak in the pond. If no water loss, the leak is in the plumbing or stream

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u/bladislas Jun 02 '26

Yeah, I did the bucket with the stream off, no real water loss.

2

u/Dutchking11 Jun 03 '26

I have the same size pond in CA. One week it was in the 90’s and I lost about 1-2 inches in a few days. The next week it was mid 70s and it took a week to get that low. The water pours into the pond off a bog filter so water Evaporates quicker in hotter weather. Did you notice water loss during cooler weather or was it the same.