What setup will allow koi and slow goldfish to live together?

Question

Some people have told me I'm not supposed to keep koi with goldfish. The reason I've heard is that the slower fish can't get food.

Unfortunately, we had an issue with one of the ponds/waterfalls getting ruined in a tremendous monsoon. To prevent further problems, I must remodel it. So I moved the goldfish and koi together temporarily After a few days of the goldfish harassing the koi, and I separated them for a day, then returned them, they appear to get along peacefully. They've created small groups, where certain goldfish and certain koi area nearly always seen together.

Since I'm doing remodeling, I want to completely convert the three separate ponds into a single 36,000 gallon pond. That means they'd have to co-exist all together forever.

Is there any problem having the fish altogether? If beyond the food issue, is there a solution?

Is there some strategy for letting all fish, even slow ryukins, access to food? The food is fed by a auto-feeder.

Answer 1

Keeping koi and goldfish in the same pond is not a problem at all; both types of fish are in the same family with the same needs, same food, water and temperature.

Koi and goldfish will compete over food in the same way as all other fish living together will do, so this is not a problem at all.

To be sure all your fish gets the food they need, you can spread the food over a larger area of your pond when you feed them.