Koi Breeding 2013

[roselanekoi]

After giving koi breeding a miss last year I decided to have another go this year. So in an effort to get a bigger variety of koi, I decided to do things differently this year and have bred from a mass spawning in the pond rather than my usual method of selectively breeding a single variety of koi.
I just hung the spawning brushes along one side of the pond and waited for things to happen. I didn’t have long to wait as the koi started spawning overnight and were hard at the following morning, in fact this continued all the following day as well, long after the brushes of spawn were removed to the breeding pond.

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There seems to have been a very good fertility rate with very few infertile eggs. How many fry have I got? It’s difficult to estimate, probably somewhere around 10,000. Two weeks on and the fry seem to be doing well with only a few losses so far. Although still feeding brine shrimp I’m now weaning the fry onto very fine grade high protein granular food. It’s still difficult to make out any patterns in the fry although there does seem to be a good range of varieties and colours, I think it will be another couple of weeks before I can start culling the fry.

Finally I should mention the best piece of equipment there is for koi breeding and that’s EA’s Answer. With this in the settlement chamber (you can just see the corner of mine in the above photo) no fry get sucked through the filter to get chewed up in the pump.

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[pollygog]

It was with one of those green spawning brushes I managed to dislodge the plastic bowl from my bottom drain after the club barbeque for the Liverpool koi club, the 'Black Knight' brand that I have are particularly stiff for that dual purpose role. Are you doing a follow up to the spawning as I'm interested as to how you actually select the koi you keep from the thousands of also-rans? also, could you use the culled fry in a stirr fry or in batter as whitebait?

[roselanekoi]

I will be doing a few follow ups in the next month or two. Although they're rather small at the moment I'm sure you could put the culled fry in a stir fry, or even in the squirrel stew. I'll let you know when I do the first cull,

Colin

[pollygog]

Cheers for that Col but don't think fish and stew go together, I wonder if Ian has taken any of this on board for Wednesday nights club meet, could turn out to be an interesting evening! See you there anyway.

Phil.

[roselanekoi]

I carried out the first cull of this years fry yesterday, reducing the numbers by approximately two thirds. It's amazing how varied the growth rates are with some of the larger fry now being around 50 mm in length while the smallest of their siblings are still only 10mm.

The largest fry have been moved to a large aquarium to grow on separately, one of the reasons they grow so quickly is by feeding on their smaller siblings.

It's difficult to identify the keepers with fry this size, especially the smallest ones. There does seem to be some promising kohaku, sanke and showa amongst the smaller fry, whilst the larger fry are either chagoi or ochiba. My male goshiki was very active during the spawning so I'm hopeful there may also be one or two goshiki in there somewhere.

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Reducing the numbers should help improve the growth rate and In a few weeks time I'll net the complete pond and carry out another cull.

The fry are currently being fed on a mixture of 53% protein Red Astax Granular feed which is supplemented with ground up koi food, I'm also feeding the remainder of my brine shrimp.

Colin

[roselanekoi]

With the weather turning colder last week I decided to carry out my final cull of the summer a few days ago, sorry no pictures as it started raining quite heavily as I was finishing off.

It always amazes me how different the grown rates are, some of the koi of chagoi / ochiba parentage were around 4 inches long whilst some of the smallest were less than an inch.

I've now split the koi up with the larger koi going into my 700 gallon indoor tank for the winter whilst the smaller koi are in a 70 gallon aquarium.

I'm hopeful I'll end up with some nice koi in the spring, amongst the varieties spawned are kohaku, sanke, showa, chagoi, ochiba and hopefully one or two goshiki.

Putting the spawning brushes in the main pond and hatching the results of a mass spawning has worked out well on a number of counts. I've had a bigger variety of fry and there was less pollution in my small pond as a result of not having the spawning take place there. There were also fewer fry, this may at first seem like a disadvantage, but it did make the numbers more manageable with a lot fewer losses as a result.

Colin

[roselanekoi]

Just been moving some of my larger fry from the aquarium to the growing on tank to give a little more room for their smaller siblings to grow.

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Quite please with the growth, the largest is now just under 4 inches and has more than doubled in size in the last 6 weeks. This was about the size of the larger fish when they were moved to the growing on tank and some of them must be 6 inches plus now.

Colin

[roselanekoi]

A few days ago I harvested around 20 fry which had been growing in my wildlife pond over the summer. They have been growing in a shallow pond of around 150 gallons of water and were placed there in June when they were around 10mm long, I suppose the largest are now 50mm long.

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Certainly no show winners nor the best of photos, I must get another small blue bowl, but they've grown to this size purely on the natural food found in the pond.

I was a bit undecided about where to put them for the winter as I was concerned about introducing any nasties to all the other fry growing on indoors. I eventually decided to put them in my 1100 gallon spawning pond for the winter, now with just an airstone to provide a little water movement.

In fact they may just have had a lucky escape as a few days later there was a heron in the garden, still they're quite safe now as their new home is covered with polycarbonate sheeting.

Colin

[pollygog]

Couple of interesting looking fish there Colin, I have just put 5 of the six fry back into my thousand litre quarantine tank for the winter from the wildlife pond. Mine seem to have made the same progress as yours judging by the size, there is six fry but I cannot see the last one in my wildlife pond to catch it as its black and the water is now too disturbed and mucky to even see it.The reason I decided to move mine is now the vegetation in pond, the lillies mainly, are dying back they are more exposed to a heron attack and Soddes law says they will vanish overnight,or more factually first light in the morning usually when 'Old Cronk' visits.

[roselanekoi]

When I emptied my small pond back in September I put the larger fry into my 700 gallon indoor tank and the small fry into a 70 gallon aquarium. The aquarium is now beginning to look very overcrowded, as you can see from the photo below, so it was time for another sort out.

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Some of the larger koi were approaching 4 inches in size and 7 of these were removed to the 700 gallon pond, of the rest I've returned around 30 to the aquarium to grow on over the winter and the remainder have been sold.

I estimated there were over 100 fry in the bowl and although I think one or two of the very smallest fry may have been eaten by their siblings, I have only lost two fish which is very pleasing.

Keeping such a high stocking rate does require a lot of maintenance and a careful check on the water quality otherwise disaster is not far away. Having soft tap water I do have to keep a close eye on the pH, this can fall to dangerous levels very quickly if I don't add a small amount of bi-carb with the daily water change. I'm looking forward to seeing how the koi develop as they grow over the winter.

Colin