Saturday 26th January 2008
Sorry for posting today's edition, tomorrow, or should I say yesterday's today?
As I said yesterday the 400 koi we have ear marked for a customer have settled in well and come to greet us any time we get anywhere near their pond. The water is a little warmer than the mud pond, although unheated and their activity has markedly increased.
And once they settle down a little, you can get the general view.
These koi are nisai (two year olds) and settle into different water far easier than young koi. They are in good condition and will be ready to go anytime.
Younger koi, Tosai (one year olds) are a little harder, as you may recall last week we selected through the tosai and moved them around, some which carry on to the final selection have been placed in 2 ponds and the remainder which have gone into another pond until the open weekend. Basically we moved koi from 4 ponds into 3. One pond, the first we filled with one of the kohaku spawning and one of the showa were fine. The other with the shiro utsuri and another showa batch went a little sick. Also the combined pond with the sales koi are looking a little off colour. This is not a parasite problem, it's because of being moved, the Japanese call it 'Processing disease' and is related just to the stress of being moved.
To counter this, I have added a bag of salt to each pond, this should be enough to take the stress off the koi and I expect in a day or two they will look fine. On my many visits to Japan, the amount of salt they use when moving koi becomes very obvious. As a rule I only use salt for two reasons, one if I am moving young koi and the other if a koi has an ulcer, other than those reasons, salt has no long-term use in a koi pond.
When I add salt to a pond, it is slowly removed by water changes.