2005 Spawning Blog
I am very glad that I kept the tank of half breeds. By observing them versus the pure breed fry, I am definetly seeing the difference in genetics. Hardly any deformities in the half breed pond. Didn't loose any to this Costia problem. They are not as pretty, I can definetly see the difference in skin quality and color. The Japanse fry are all from a single female and multiple males. Not much variety in that tank. A majority of the fry are go-sanke. In the half-breed tank, I had fry from multiple females paired with the japanese males. I see some different looking fry in this tank. The heads on the white fry show the typical bone color. See quite a few koi which could be matsuba. Im sure your begging for more pictures by now right ? Ok, check back monday :)
Fry were flashing quite a bit. I have found it handy to catch a few of the koi with deformities to use as my scrape & scope victims. That way I dont harm any of the nicer koi. Didn't find anything under the microscope. Treated with Proform C anyway. This time 200mil per 1000 gallons.
Culled some of the fish with deformities. Twisted tails. Deformed gill plates. Found one koi that looked like a Celestial goldfish. Big flat head, eyes pointing up. Weird. I guess thats what you get when you inbreed too much I didn't get a picture of him tho. Here are a picture of just a few.
No more dead fry. Fry appear to be doing well, eating good. Started feeding flake food along with the pellets. Just crushing the flakes up a little bit (not powered like before). Trying to help the little koi catch up. There are a few dozen Tobi koi. The biggest a chagoi about 3". A couple Ochibas and a kohaku also that size. The little koi hang around the shallows and seem to be pretty terrritorial. As the little koi feed, the Tobis come up from the deep areas and chase them around trying to eat them. Total death count to-date is around 3500. Almost half of the fry. Have not lost any fry in the half-breed pond.
150 dead fry.
425 dead fry.
650 dead fry. Upped the dosage of Proform C to 150 mil per 1000 gallons. Shane and I did some culling. Removed about 1000 pure white, solid orange, and kohaku to separate tanks. Focusing on keeping more of the sankes, showas, and metallic koi. Looks like the spawn was 30% or more kohaku. So probably leave those males out of the mix next time.
20 dead fry when I got home from work. Scraped and scoped and found nothing. Went ahead and did a Proform treatment anyway.
No more dead fry. Proform worked. Did a partial water change, and gave the pond the 3rd dose of Proform C.
400 more dead fry. Drained and cleaned the settling chamber, then dosed the pond with 2nd treatment of Proform.
1000 more dead fry. Life sucks, time to pick another hobby. Went during lunch to Kloubec's Fisheries and picked up 2 gallons of Proform C. Dosed the pond 100mil per 1000gallons when I got home.
50 dead fry in the morning. Scraped 4 different koi in the morning, found nothing. That night found 30 more dead. The decreasing number of deaths leaves me hopeful that I got the costia. Scraped and scoped 3 more koit and found them crawling with costia again. Dang, and no Proform C on hand.
200 more dead fry. Scraped and scoped, found nothing.
200 more dead fry. Scraped and scoped, found nothing. Did a PP treatment anyway.
Fry pond was looking ok this morning. Water was nasty brown from the PP treatment. I couldnt tell if any more fry had died. I will start doing water changes when I get home from work.
Several hundred more dead fry in the tank. The advice was to go ahead and treat with PP. I started the PP treatment about 5:15pm. 6 teaspoons of PP (treating a 3,000 gallon pond). Treatment lasted until about 7pm. Fry were looking great, tadpoles didnt seem to mind the treatment. The water was green so I figure it probably burned up alot of the PP. I waited until 8pm and repeated the treatment. It was to dark to tell when it ended.
Went out to feed the koi fry when I got home from work and saw alot of them floating dead. I just pulled out 200 dead fry from my pond with the purebreed Japanese fry. Scraped a live one which was struggling, found nothing (including gills). Gills looked black. Scraped another live one it was crawling with costia.
I dont have any Proform on hand, and nobody in town carries it. I didn't know if PP was safe for fry that small, so I consulted people on the bulliten boards. I got costia in with my Japanese parent stock, flukes too. Ive treated my parent stock with Proform C per its schedule and scoped and found nothing on repeated scopings. I dont know how the contamination occurred. I have used separate nets, pumps, bowls, the works. The only think that it could be is frogs.
The tank of domestic fry is fine, and there are even 5 frogs in there. Im very puzzled as to how this happened. Its very discouraging, specially since last year I lost all of my fry to some kind of unknown problem similar to this one.
Took some new pictures. Some colors really starting to come out.
Wow, the oldest batch of fry is one month old today. Its been a fun month. The fry are eating the new pellets. They nibble and tear at them. I started them off with 2 tablespoons of pellets per feeding. Its a good thing they are moving on to pellets because the brine shrimp don't seem to last very long. I sat watching a few of the fry I have in a 30 gallon aquarium at work. I counted all the shrimp that one particular fry ate. It ate over 100 shrimp in about 5 minutes. WOW.
I had a spawning last night as well. This time the female was my 18" Karasu. I had 4 spawning ropes out in the pond and caught alot of eggs. Probably throw them in a kiddy pool and see what develops.
My new food arrived today. Dainichi Baby koi pellets. 39% Protein. Tried some with the koi fry in my aquarium at work and the seemed to nibble at them alot more than they did the powdered flakes. Hopefully they will start eating them and I can wean them off of Brine Shrimp.
Warm weather is finally back. Fry are really growing. I used a blue frisbee as a bowl to take the pictures. Color was just perfect.
Frost again last night. 3rd cold snap this spring. Temperatures are 20 degrees below average. I thought global warming was suppost to make Iowa warmer...NOT COLDER!!! Jeez, what a PITA.
The pool with the second batch of koi fry is still covered. They are doing well. I gave them their first dose of Brine Shrimp today.
I started mixing in powdered flake food in with the brine shrimp today. Hopefully that will start supplementing them as they get too big for the Brine Shrimp. I have micro-pellets on order.
The fry have been hanging around the bottom lately because of the colder weather. It was really hard to tell how many where in there. When I got home from work today and looked in the tank It just about blew my mind. All of the fry were near the surface as thick as in the photo. I counted 1,000 fry in the photo, an that was only about a 16" wide area of them. There must easily be around 10,000 fry in this tank.
Well the Eggs which were layed last Sunday started hatched out last night. Wouldnt you know it the weather dropped down to 47F today. Is this Iowa, or did somebody move me to Canada when I wasent looking. Brrrrrrr.
On a secondary note, my morning jug of brine shrimp eggs fell over. All the water and eggs poured into the pond in the garage, so it didn't spill all over, but what a mess in the water YUCK. So the fry will miss a feeding thursday morning. Now that i'm feeding 3 tablespoons they wont be down that much. I cut bigger holes in the wood support structure and now the jugs wont fall over again.
Got 2" of rain last night. The fry pond had overflowed on to the grass (2" of rain over a 14x18 area would be about 315 gallons). I couldn't see any fry in the grass, but then again they are soooo small. Note to self: Add an overflo tub with very fine screen to keep the fry in the pool. :)
The fry have very full bellies, but I have noticed that there aren't any Brine Shrimp left in the water when I give them their next feedings. Decided to increase the production of brine shrimp hatching from 2 to 3 tablespoons of eggs every 12 hours. Hopefully that will be enough.
Mothers Day !! And what a surprize, my koi are mothers again !! The cool spell of the last few weeks has tricked the koi in to thinking it was spawning time again. We had a warm evening and a nice thunderstorm Saturday night which caused the koi to spawn again. I collected the eggs and put them in the adjacent pool. I collected more eggs than I ever have in the past. The females which spawned were a Hi Matsuba (left photo), and a Metallic Ogon (right photo). Should produce some interesting fry.
My kiddy pool laced with chicken poop is a nice shade of dark green. Only took 3 days. Pretty cool.
Removed the plastic completly from the pools. Nighttime temps are now in the mid 50F. Fry are really growing.
Its been a long week. The daytime temperatures have been in the upper 60's, however the nightime temperatures have been in the low 40's. Each night I have been cover the hatching pool with plastic, and then uncovering it during the day. This has maintained water temperature within a 5F swing from night to morning.
I brought 30 fry to work this morning. I have them in my 30 gallon tank (no other fish in there). I have brine shrimp in there for them to eat (which has made work a very fun experience).
Neighbor brought over some Chicken poop. I mixed some of it in a bucket, then strained out the liquid and put it in one of the kiddy pools. This is an experiment in trying to get a green water culture going so I can start messing with some rotifer cultures.
IT SNOWED AGAIN. Air temps were in the upper 30's this morning. Water temp was 50F......OUCH. Baby koi look unaffected by the temperature. I go ahead and feed them another 1/4 of the Brine Shrimp.
IT SNOWED. Air temps were in the mid 40's all weekend. Brine Shrimp have hatched out. About 3pm I feed about 1/4 of the Brine Shrimp to the baby koi. They didn't agressively attack them like I have seen in the past, so I'm thinking the water temperature is a little too low for them, or mabye they are just a little small to eat the shrimp yet. Around 8pm, I put one of the baby koi under the microscope, and sure enough its belly was full of Shrimp, so I feed another 1/4 of the Shrimp. I also took a picture of one of the Brine Shrimp under the Microscope. Way cool looking, like little boats with mini oars. The picture on the left is 100X magnification of a Brine Shrimp. The picture on the right is 40x. The Brine Shrimp are circled in red, underneath the koi. Just to give you a perspective on their sized.
Pond is still covered with plastic. Water temp is 68F. Some of the fry are free swimming, others are still sticking to the sides of the tank. Water is very light green. I'm slightly worried about them having enough to eat. I started up a batch of brine shrimp. Should be ready to feed Sunday night.
I have been checking the spawning pool each night for signs of life, and seen nothing. Then I checked it tonight and I HAVE LIVE FRY !!! Well, well, well, seems like nature is a little more resiliant than I thought. Here's a picture of one of the koi fry under the microscope (40x). They were so small I couldnt get a good picture with the camera. Click Here for video of a koi fry's heart beating (100x). Warning, the video files is 4.5meg.
I checked some eggs under the microscope. Koi are dead inside the eggs. Looks like this spawning is over.
Covered the hatching pond in plastic in an attempt to protect the eggs. Forcast is now predicting a low of 35F for the next couple of nights.
Well, I checked some eggs under the microscope last night. Baby koi are alive still, and look like pretty close to hatching. It will be a miracle if they survive this freak cold spell. In this photo the black arrow is pointed at the koi's eye, continue clockwise around the top and down to about 5pm and you can see the tip of the koi's tail. The big circle in the center is the eggsack.
Well, the weather has taken a change for the worse. Wednesday night the water temprature was 70F at 10pm. The night time low got to around 42F. Pond temparture at 8am was 58F. So the pond droped 12 degrees in just under 12 hours. Thats a pretty hard shock. I am doubtful if the koi eggs will hatch. They should be hatching anytime now. Forcast for the next week doesn't look good.
The left spawning pool is full of water, eggs are there, just waiting anxiously for a hatching. The pool is 18x14x30" deep, and around 3600 gallons. Next step is to get the right pool done, and get some green water brewing to feed these guys when they hatch.
Checked the progress of the eggs. Appears about 50% or less fertalization rate. The whitish eggs are unfertalized. Given the Male koi went outside the day of spawning, they didn't have much time to prepare. Hopefully I will still have enough fry to allow for some selection.
2am, time to go check the progress of the spawning. Even with a half moon its very bright outside. Koi still going at it. Not that many eggs being laid yet, so its still early. The toads are at it also, its so loud I can barely think. Go back to bed and check them in a few more hours. 6am now. Get up again, and check the koi. MAJOR EGGAGE.
Note to self: Buy more spawning ropes. The green spawning ropes are very full. The black ones don't collect many eggs. I probably wont use that brand next year. I sit and watch the koi spawn for a couple hours, make sure they don't eat the eggs. By 8am, I move the spawning ropes to the kiddy pools.
Koi were winding down, looking like they were ready to start eating eggs. Female Showa is very tired. Looks like she still has some eggs tho, she keeps going over to the weeds. They keep going till around 10am. I collect the rest of the eggs that were laid on hair alge and move them to the kiddy pools. I take my seining net and cordon the area around the egg laying of to protect the eggs still in the pond from being eaten.
Well, around noon, my domestic koi start spawning in the lower pond. I decided to take my Large Orange ogon up and put her with the Male Japanese Koi. That way they will leave the Showa Female alone. Well, that works out great and they spawn her until about 4pm. I collect the eggs on hair algae and put them in a separate pool. So now I have one pool of 100% pure Japanese koi spawn, and one pool of 50/50. Cool.
About 6pm, transfered all of the domestic koi up to the large pond. Lower pond now only contains about 12 of last years Tosai.
Morning started out pretty overcast, my hopes of taking the rest of my Japanese koi outside seemed pretty slim. Water temp in the morning was 58F outside (the Japanese koi are at 68F). Well, by lunchtime, the clouds were gone and the air temperature is 83F. Water temp slowly climbed up to 65F. Around 4pm decided to take the 9 Japanese koi outside to the upper pond with the Sanke and Showa. Took out the 2 Shiro Utsuri, 2 Yamabuki, 2 kohaku, Chagoi, Soragoi, and the Platinum ogon. The were very happy to be outside in their new home. Just in case, I fill up the 2 kiddy pools, and put the spawning ropes in the water. Checked them at 10pm before I went to bed and they were SPAWNING. They dont normally spawn until the full moon in late May. The moon was only half full, but they must have been anxious to go after being cooped up indoors for so long. I laid out 2 of the the green spawning brushes and about 12' of the Spawning Seaweed, and went to bed.
The 7day weather forcast looks promising. The temperatures outside finally match the tempature in the basement pond. 63F. Around Noon, Shane and I transfer the Male Sanke and Female Showa into the upper pond. They are the only koi up there. We transfer the rest of my domestic koi the the lower pond. Several customers stop in during the process to buy koi.
