Frozen Koi

Ok, don’t make fun of me.
I have a koi fish pond in my back yard for the first winter this year and I’m not really sure of all the rules to keep them alive.
Apparently they can survive the cold if the pond is at least 3 feet deep. Mine is 4. They go in a hibernation-like state and don’t need to eat.

I had a fish pond in a house I grew up in that was all snow-covered and frozen and the goldfish survived when we discovered them in the spring.

I did not know you had to have a hole in the ice so the gases can be exchanged. If you don’t they suffocate.I think they’re all dead now. Actually I saw a couple frozen in the surface ice when I turned the light on from below, they’re sort of frozen mid swim probably trying to get up to breathe.

This weekend I tried to drill a little hole in the ice to see how thick it was and while I was drilling orange stuff came from my drilling. I drilled right through a fish !! What are the odds of that?
Horrified.

I’m not looking forward to the spring to deal with 7 fish corpses.