Customer Story: Marche B. – “A Family’s Journey, Told in Koi – Marche B.’s Living Legacy in Every Fin”

Customer Story By: Marche B.

“Hello, my name is Marche and I would like to enter this contest for my husband. Let me start by telling you a little about our family. My husband, Tony, and I met when I was 16, in Alaska. We are now in our 30s with 2 amazing kids and live in Buckeye, AZ.  Tony was diagnosed with an auto immune disease when he was a teenager and has undergone many surgeries and hospital stays I can’t even try to count.

My husband for years now has had a dream to own a koi pond with Japanese Koi. I have spent many days listening to him talk about and even watching him draw out and plan how he would have it. Many things have come in his way to prevent this. Due to how bad his illness has gotten we currently live in my parent’s home as Tony is unable to work currently. I work as an aide in a Head start preschool to support us and our 2 kids. With living in my parents home we do also have to take into consideration their wishes on installing ponds in their back yard.

When Tony realized his dream of a koi pond may not be able to come true he got into fancy goldfish. We started out with a 36 gallon tank and have moved up to a 75 gallon tank, Tony worships his fish more than a normal person would. His prized possession is our orange Oranda, Nacho, who we got as a tiny peanut at a Petco for 5 dollars and is now a beautiful about 7-8 inch fish.

Tony spends a lot of time researching and watching everything about koi. This year he decided to take on a project, he needed something to keep his mind busy as his physical health was really taking a toll on his mental health. He watched people use recycled materials to build koi ponds in their back yard. He started small with just getting a 12 ft above ground pool new in the box off Offer up. Now he needed a filtering system. He came up with a 55 gallon drum from Facebook Marketplace. He slowly every paycheck would come up with another piece, media balls, a pump, PVC, and everything else we might have needed. 

Finally it was time to build, I would like to add that he started this build with temperatures here in Arizona in the 90’s, he would come out little bits at a time as he could tolerate and day by day get just a little bit more done. Getting the ground level was the first step, where we live there is a lot of rocky type sand for our backyard so he would sit and pick all the rocks out so that he would not puncture the pool and it could last as long as we need it to. 

Next was to move on to the filtration. He saw other people’s designs online and came up with a way he wanted to do it and hoped for the best.  

When the water started flowing and the barrel wasn’t overflowing it was emptying into a beautiful waterfall, the joy on my husband’s face was priceless. Tony is a very hands on person, he loves to create things and fix things. His whole life he has worked on cars and it has been a few years since he has been able to do that, it has been a struggle for him. Even though his pond was full and his filter was running, there were still other obstacles he needed to face. Shade is important here in Arizona, summers get well over 100 during the day and the pool needs a good shade. 

Tony spent a few days digging holes and making a shade possible here to help keep the pond temperature at a reasonable level and to give the fish protection from the UV rays of Arizona. 

Another success, the shade was up and even endured a thunderstorm the first night and held up beautifully. Everything was coming together nicely.

I did some research and found there were some places near us that we could go look at some Japanese koi, so we went, again the joy on Tony’s face to walk around all of the beautiful koi and know his dream was slowly coming true (at least to an extent) was absolutely priceless. We found 2 friends to bring home with us to start our koi journey.

We then found ourselves with another bump in our road, we were overrun with algae. Tony then came up with another plan, another design, another project. We needed to install a UV to the pond because in Arizona we were going to be a great home for some Algae growth. 

Tony created a design so that he would have a spray bar, he was concerned about oxygen level with our heat levels. We had one little hiccup as it leaked initially but it was nothing Tony couldn’t fix. Then it was the waiting game to see if the UV would do the trick. Within 24 hours we started to see improvement. About 72 hours later we were crystal clear.

As I began writing this letter Tony already started creating an upgraded filter system. He has begun working on a 3 step filter system with Matala mats, K1 media, and bio balls. The system will have 3 barrels with different filtration in each barrel before returning to the pond. He also created a pan net out of PVC and a mop handle.

His next step is to make a more permanent structure. His dream is to have a pond like the ones he sees on YouTube. I hope his dream can keep coming true and he can keep his passion for koi going, and grow it to many heights. 

I know that you will receive a lot of beautiful entries with peoples amazing koi ponds. I also know that he has not currently been able to make a purchase from your store yet. But I hope you will keep him into consideration for your contest as I have watched him scroll through all the beautiful fish you have and wish and dream to be purchasing one of your Dainichi’s or your Marudo’s or all the other breeders he says I can’t begin to list. He is a true Japanese Koi lover and is trying to live out his dream to own some of his own and not just watch everyone else on YouTube. Thank you for your time and consideration. 

Sincerely,

Marche Bender”

CUSTOMER’S GALLERY : MARCHE B.