Koi pond maint. price?

[Olylawnboy]

I need some help coming up with a price to charge to take care of a Koi pond. As wierd as it sounds, I need to come up with a yearly price for the maintenance of this pond before I understand everything I need to do. For the bean counters.
There is a 50 sq ft pool with a waterfall that spills into a 120 sq ft pool that grows plants, a filter pool right? And then spills into a 600 sq ft pond in a kind of "T" shape with a couple of small containment pools that are used for breeding. Also there is another 100 sq ft pond on the property that was used to grow younger fish.
This was the hobby of one of my oldest clients, 22 years, (a half ac of formal Japenese garden) and he pased away last spring. A DR. that died of skin cancer at the age of 58.
The system got turned off in the spring (well I bet never got turned on) when he could no longer take care of it, a too proud to ask for help thing, and the water is an ugly brown now as it hasn't been circulating, however the water level of the main pond has not gone down over time. Something must be working.
So anyway, could someone give me a ballpark price for the yearly maint. of a pond like this please? I have no clue but I do get to charge a kind of a "going rate" if I can come up with one.
They provide all of the equipment, telescopic nets, vacume cleaner for the bottom and such, plus feed, yea I have to feed them now and then.
Any help would be fantastic!
thanks....Oly

[Victor]

Here's the deal. Your first order of business will be bringing that pond back under control. Since it's been neglected for some time, you've got your work cut out for you. Now... There's no way to know how much time will be required to bring it back, so you need to go into this deal with that in mind. I'd recommend you charge them an hourly rate and tell them that your first order of business will be restoring the pond to acceptable conditions. Tell them that after you've brought the pond back to acceptable conditions, your focus will then switch over to maintaining it. Without seeing the pond, or being able to look at it in person, it's hard to tell how long any of this work will take. I can tell you that this isn't the time of year I'd prefer to do that kind of work though.

How quickly the pond turns around depends on a lot of things like how bad it's condition is right now and how well it responds to your efforts. How much maintenance will be required to maintain it will depend upon factors like how well the pond was designed. Is the filtration system adequate? Is the pond overstocked? Is the pond under a tree, or trees? These are all rhetorical questions by the way.

Sorry, but if you were looking for direct answers Oly, I can't give you any. You're going to have to do this one on a wait and see basis. Good luck.

Vic