Yep a fancy name for a dream!
I am from Oz and because the importation of koi into this country has been banned since the late 70s our gene pool is small and any "new" varieties have to be built from scratch with what we already have.
In 2009 a friend and I had a conversation about a past Ki Shusui that was famous in Oz for its rare Ki and the unusual scale pattern. It was called the Chrysanthemum Shusui.
Because Ki ( non metalic) is rare here we talked about the possibility of creating Ki Utsuri if we could only find some genetics from the Shusui. He said he had a Midori in his pond that came from that gene pool and after much discussion, and working out what males he had available, he suggested using his Kumonryu with her. His vision was brilliant! After some excited conversations it was decided to share some eggs so it could be a joint venture and also a way to ensure that some would survive if one of us had a problem and also a way to broaden the gene pool. The term Golden Dragon was coined during that conversation.
We know it will be a long journey to try and produce a new variety that is fixed in its traits and repeatable in each spawn with a reasonable % of keepers but a journey is not possible without taking the first step.
These are the first steps.
Below are my first few notes:
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The Midorigoi and Kumonryu spawned 21st October 2009
I received eggs the next day and put them in a small floating net in the poly tunnel pond.
Eggs hatched on the 25th/10/09
Moved them to the Intex pool on 28/10/09
2nd /11/09 they're 8 days old today.
Some have Ki.
Most are white and there are a few black based fry.
They average around 1cm.
4/1/10
around 9 weeks old today. (63 days)
Culled them and put around 20 in the mudpond.
I kept a mix to see how they develop.
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Around the middle of February 2010 I was battling a water quality issue in the mudpond. I was walking the pond every day because of Methane gas pockets building up in the mud bottom. I also had my Kohaku fry in there but fry are too small to dig through the mud and release the gas. Huge water changes, walking the pond and adding crushed lime stone didn't help and the pond went belly up one night.
I lost most of the fry by morning but managed to save a few and moved them to a filtered pond. I now only put the babies out in the mudpond once they are a year old and have had no further problems.
A few photos below.
Eggs
Fry in the Intex pool.
Culling day. Some of the keepers ready to released to the mudpond.
No photos again until april 2011 after they had been put out in the mudpond again in September 2010 at almost 1 year old.
Harvest photo in April 2011 of the Ki Kumonryu
Harvest photo in April 2011 of the one Kumonryu sibling I kept.