Koi Breeding 2002. My first year.
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Breeding fish has always been a great passion for me, I have been a fish keeper since my early teens and have always kept fish I could breed from. It was because of this fact that I did not get into koi keeping much earlier, as when they started to become available I was told in no uncertain terms that there was no way that koi could be bred in the UK because of the climate! This stopped me from buying any koi and for the outside pond I stuck with goldfish. I brought my first koi around 9 years ago, but the hobby only started to reel me in 6 years ago and since has become my life. Well knowledge has changed over the years and breeding koi is as easy as any other cold water fish, though breeding quality koi is another story. It's my dream.
I have had a couple of mud ponds for 4 years now, they have been used for rearing small koi. The first year, English bred koi I bought in, second and third for raising Japanese koi. Success has been variable and lessons have been learned regarding stocking levels. In 2002 I decided I would have my first attempt at breeding koi proper!
I spawned several pairs and used a couple of different methods. The first was to place the Oyagoi (parents) in the mud pond and let them go about things in a totally natural way. These consisted of a female Chagoi, a male Chagoi and two male kohaku. The hope from this pairing would result in Chagoi, sorigoi and Ochiba fry. They were place in the mud pond on the 29th of May and 4th of June they had spawned, no artificial spawning media was used as the couch grass around the pond hung well into the water. This grass was covered in eggs as was half of the bank as eggs had obviously been sprayed far and wide.
Now the problem arose, how to get the Oyagoi back out of the pond, the plan was that as they were so tame I would feed them and just net them up. Well it didn't work out as easy and it took a few days, they were not very hungry as they had many eggs to feed on and they were so quick and seemed to revert to the wild.
With the parents out it was time to wait, the eggs were watched keenly, a fair percentage were in fertile and went fungus, I was most concerned as the pond had been taken over by newts, hundreds of them. 5 days later all the eggs seemed to have disappeared and I thought the worse, the newts had eaten them all. This was unfounded as within a day of careful looking I spotted the first fry. They were hard to spot as Chagoi fry start their life the same colour as adults and looking for these in murky water was not easy. To my surprise there were also fry that looked like kohaku fry, being yellow in colour.
A few days after the Chagoi spawning I also spawned some goshiki in a tank at Wrington. These Goshiki were from Matsunosuke Isawa and very closely related, so I thought the outcome from these may be reasonably good. The female I picked while in Japan in January 2002, the male was one that was featured in Nishikigoi International magazine a few years back that I bought in a pond clearance.
These were spawned onto artificial spawning brushes. These brushes were carefully bagged up and moved to the same mud pond as the Chagoi fry and held in a floating net. These hatched in 5 days and it was easy to see these as they stood out so well in the white floating net. They were released into the mud pond along with the other fry. The next morning on arriving at Wrington for work I was amazed to see thousands of yellow fry in the vortex connected to the tank these Goshiki spawned in. I then spent an hour or so removing them to a buck and set off to the ponds to free the fry. Same the next morning the vortex was full of fry again!
As soon as the Chagoi had spawned, I tipped a wheelbarrow full of Turkey manure into the mud pond, I had been warned that this was a dodgy thing to do as it creates a level of pollution, fuel for minute water flees, Daphnia, this is the food the fry will live on for the first few week. There is no exact science to this and it is a little trail and error, it should have been done a few weeks earlier and then topped up at a later stage, but the mud pond was a teem with life, so I opted for a top up.
Growth was astounding and within a month I could see little koi 1" in length, after 6 weeks live food was getting short and I started adding a few mini Hikari staple pellets. It took a couple of days for the baby koi to find these pellets, slowly but surely they started to gather around and nibble at the pellets. Just a few days on and the nibbling could be heard up on the bank so keen were the fry to feed.
Here is a MPEG movie for you to download showing the fry going crazy for food taken in August 2002.
http://www.koi-uk.co.uk/DSCF0001.mpg
The two photos below are of a dark and a light Chagoi of 10cm taken in September 2002.
Most of the yellow/orange koi from the Chagoi female were plain orange as they grew, though most had black caps on their heads. Some formed a pattern, most still had black caps and as time went on these were obviously goshiki as you could see many with underlying gray/purple. These orange ones grew at the same rate as the chagoi, but the patterned ones were smaller. They were not from the Goshiki spawning, these were easy to tell apart. The Goshiki from the tank spawning proved to be very poor with very few patterned koi and much smaller.
In July I spawned a female Yamabuki ogon with two male. The hatch rate from this spawning was low, I think this was due too the female having many eggs and only using two small males. But the results from the survivors was quite good, unfortunately there were only a handful though.
Below is a photo of a few of these including a couple that need culling out as the skin and luster is not so good.
During September 2002 while giving a few last feeds to the tosai in the mud pond I swooped in a couple of times with a pan net, unfortunately most of the bigger, stronger koi were away like lightning but I was able to catch around a hundred of the smaller ones. These I returned to Wrington where I placed them in a heated tank for the winter to grow on a little and give me something to watch. The largest of these was around 3" and by March 2003 a few were up to 6".
Most of the Tosai from 2002 are still in the mud pond and will be harvested in late April.
Posted below is a photo of a little goshiki that was amongst these over wintered at Wrington, it was only a couple of inches long but now April 2003 is about 3 1/2".
When the weather warms a little the best from the mud pond and the best from Wrington will be placed in another mud pond to grow for a further season.
Photo above take 27/05/03 at 8 1/4" just before going to mud pond for the summer.
Photo below take 27/05/03 of chagoi, ochiba and sorigoi as they too were heading off to a mud pond, size up to 9"
25/11/03
The lake that these koi were placed in for the summer months has been plagued with herons. They stopped coming up for pellets early July and have not been seen since. Sadly this will have restricted their growth.
I had planned on draining this pond to catch the koi, unfortunately this kept being put back due to work commitments. I ran out of time and the water cooled and have decided to leave them in the lake till spring.
I have 3 that I kept back from the mud pond, two to grow on at home and one small one that ended up left at my unit in Wrington. This one was small in spring and did not think it worth putting in the mud pond, during the year it has grow progressively, when I harvested this year tosai this chagoi stayed in their over wintering pond and is currently growing at an amazing rate. I'll catch it up and snap a picture shortly. The other two have spent the summer in my fish house at home as the new pond is still not complete. The tank they have lived in is far too small for the total stock, but ha massive filtration to cope. There are 30 plus koi in 2,500 gallons, with an average size of 20". These two chagoi were in the 7/8" region in May when they joined the others. I expected very little growth from any koi held in this system, but the chagoi have proved me wrong as they are now up to 14 1/2" and have built a very good body.
One is pictured below.
This close up photo shows the beauty of the net pattern scales of the above chagoi.
I will add pictures of the other two at a later date.
To be continued.
Updated 25/11/03