North Wales Koi Club Forum

Its just a thought at the moment, i may be able to offer a growing on service for a limited number of members fish next year. So far i have had a fairly good growth rate with no fish losses. My tank will become empty next April/May and i will only want to put 1 or 2 special Richdon baby's in to grow on as i'm running out of pond room therefore leaving room for 4 or so more fish. This year they have been heated to 25C with bags of filtration, regular water changes and excellent food. I've not worked out a price yet but it won't be expensive to members.
The advantage of this service is that you can buy a smaller good quality fish from your dealer and in a year you get back a substantially bigger fish that may have been out of budget!!
Of course there are no guarantees, but you would be welcome to call round and see my current results!!
Please let me know if any of you fancy taking up the offer, it also helps me out as of course carp are shoal fish and about 6 fish in my facilities seems to work well.
Thanks all ...................Mitch.

Hi Mitch,

No mention of how much you're going to charge. If the rates are reasonable, say £5 per Koi, it may be cheaper for you to grow my kohaku on for me. Can you manage 25?

Colin

Hi,
Thats not bad £5/Week per Koi , I will have to get my growing Tank up and running.
Mitch, good idea.
Question, would you be prepared to take Koi from another source, to mix with the ones you will have?

Dave.

Hi Dave,
I've thought about that one and not really made my mind up yet!! the ideal situation would be for all the fish to be bought from Richdon. However, i'll wait and see if there is any response first. If not, to guarantee the future of my G.O.T. i might get 2 for myself and 4 to grow on and sell at a later date.
Colin,
No problem mate, £5 a week x 25 is great


If anybody is interested, please post and we could discuss it. As an initial thought i was going to ask about £5 per month per fish.
Cheers all .................Mitch

Hi Mitch,

Just to keep the thread going, what growth rates have you had this year?

Colin

Hi Colin,
One fish i'm sure you know about has grown from 15 to 35cm in 6 months.(its in the same comp as yours ) My chag is at 56cm and thats after i stopped feeding them for two weeks. I also had to drop the temp to get another fish in from the outside pond, which slowed the growth down. I have stopped giving them growth food and dropped them to performance so they dont outgrow the tank. A small sanke i got from Richdon at 13cm is now approx 38cm(5 months). One thing i wouldn't do again is put a Chag in as they beat all the go sankes to the food, and without the chag i might be able to improve the growth rate on the others. I have a small kohaku and a goshski that have maybe doubled plus a bit. Obviously there would be no guarantees, but i think the results are reasonable.
Most of all i have had tremendous enjoyment out of the system and the added bonus is that because mine is in the garage i can view my koi thru the winter when my outside pond is batterned down, because its raised, when they feed they are literally 12" from my nose!!
In hindsight i dont know for sure about not having a chag in as they are very benifical and maybe the pro's outway the con's. anyway that's one for another time.

All the best ................Tancho Mitch.

Mitch,

I hope it's not your grow and show chag that is now 56cm . Must admit you summed it up for me, its the enjoyment we get through the winter of seeing them grow in the garage during these dark nights. As you know our growing on pond is right outside our kitchen door so we see them a lot more at this time of year thatn the main pond. Fancy putting a few inches on a kohaku grow and show from last year, mine didn't grow much

Ian

Hi Mitch,

Pretty impresive growth rates, perhaps you should consider charging by growth, say £5 per inch.

As you and Ian have found out there's no real difficulty in growing on small koi. All you need are:

1. Heated Tank - needs to be around 24 C for best results.
2. Plenty of good quality food.
3. Maintain good water quality, this is probably the hardest part. As the fish grow in a small tank things can quickly go pear shaped if you don't keep on top of the water quality.

Colin

Hi Colin,
I agree with your comments with one more addition, plenty of air.
A Jaccusi comes to mind
Having done it and got the 'T' shirt so to speak, the main problem is the water quality, especially when they start growing.
Found this on the Net:-
"Koi produce waste and ammonia based on their weight - not their length. Koi produce an average of .3 of their weight in waste per day."

"Their weight dramatically increases as they grow in length - thus the larger they get, the more waste they create. 1 x 10" Koi weighs approx 275 gms but 1 x 6" Koi only weighs approx 60 gms. The 10" koi produces 82.5 gms of waste per day, but the 1 x 6" koi produces only 20 gms."
So if you started with 6 x 6" Koi,which would produce 120gms of waste per day, and in 6 months they were 10" they would produce 495 gms of waste per day.
I know its load of Cr**, and might not entirely accurate, but I think you will get the drift.
Thats why its hard to keep the water parameters spot on, without a lot of maintenance or a massive filter system.

Dave.

Hi Dave,

Sorry, forgot about the airation bit.

I agree with your comments about more waste being produced as the koi grow but I'm not sure about this being 0.3 times the weight of the koi as quoted. If this was true my vortex would end up full of crap every day.

From my own observations the amount of waste produced is very dependant on the amount of food given plus some foods produce more waste than others. Temperature also seems to have an effect. At warmer temperatures the koi seem to digest the food better thus producing less solid waste although I expect this is countered by an increase in ammonia. Stop feeding for a couple of days and you won't have any solid waste although the koi will still be producing ammonia.

Colin