It amazes me how fast the koi grow. These two are over 4" long. Colors and patterns are really starting to look nice now. Stay tuned for next week, as I should have pictures from some serious culling.
At 1 month old, the fry are at a nice size, fun to watch, and patterns are really comming on strong. A Quarter (1" diameter) is used as a size comparison.
The largest fry are now eating mash (powdered pellets). They huddle in groups waiting for the food, and dive to the deep end with the slightest vibration. I started culling the Doitsu Karasu Spawn in tank #1. There are at least 10,000+ fry in this tank. I netted up around 2,000 fry, and removed 500 black fry. It took me about an hour. I used a DIY net the size of a spoon to catch the fry. The black fry went to a 800 gallon stock tank. They will not be fed, and nature can take its course. Some may survive by eating the others, we will see what develops. I still have many more fry to go through. That work will continue slowly each night. Eventually this tank will get culled down to just fry with patterns.
The fry are really growing now. These go-sanke fry are starting to show patterns.
The fry are swimming free and eating and growing great.
I have been having problems with my Great Lakes Brine Shrimp hatching so I have been feeding live Water Daphnia as a supplement. Water Daphnia needs cooler water, and the greener the better. I am culturing two tanks of them, about 500 gallons each. As they multiple and have babies, they consume the green water algae and the tank they are in gets clearer, I then change out some of the water with green water from the main pond. I am able to get a large amount of Daphnia from the tank each morning. At night the water is warmer, and they hang around more toward the bottom, so they are a little harder to harvest. Here is a close-up of some under the microscope.
Here is a picture showing how much water Daphnia that I harvest in the morning. I would estimate it at about 2 table spoons. A quarter is used for size comparison.
Well, its been 7 days. The fry started hatching Saturday. The weather has cooled and the water temp is now in the lower 60's so this is slowing things down a bit. Checked the fry under the microscope and lots of little heartbeats and activity going on in the eggs (picture from 2005).
Pair 1 did not produce any fertalized eggs. Pair 2 fertalization was very low and I only got about a dozen fry. Rather than have two empty tanks, I threw a Doitsu Karasu female in with all my Japanese males to Flock spawn. I put those eggs in Tank 1. I had planned on culling the go-sanke spawn (Pair 3) for only black fry, but I only wound up with 500 or so fry so I moved them to Tank 2 and will use Tank 3 for raising water daphnia.
The weather is perfect, the full moon is up, and the breeders started spawning today. Lets take a look at this years matches.
Tank 1 (3,000 gallons) - Pair 1 - Shiro Utsuri
 Female |
 Male |
Tank 2 (3,000 gallons)- Pair 2 - Yamabuki
 Female |
 Male |
Tank 3 (500 gallons) - Pair 3 - Showa, Sanke, Kohaku (Go-sanke)
 Female |
 Male |
 Male |
 Male |
Tank 4 (4,000 gallons) - Pair 4 - Gin Rin Ogon
 Female |
 Male |
