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    Thread: Matt's showa spawn 2015

    1. #1
      Matt24's Avatar
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      Matt's showa spawn 2015

      My showa spawned last night. I had moved them to the 1800 gallon spawning pond a couple of weeks ago. Due to cool weather, I did not add the two spawning ropes and 4 plastic plants stuck in the rocks until night before last with a warm front expected with rain. Despite the actual weather being cooler than forecasted, we were very surprised that they spawned the night of May 9 with water 64 degrees F (18 C) at dusk and 63 degrees at 8:00 am as they were finishing up, with a strong thunderstorm moving through. I was concerned that the female might not lay many eggs since the water was cool, but looking at how much she slimmed up, she must have emptied them out pretty well. I returned the four to big pond at 1:00 pm after a 3 hour bath in 100 gal of 0.28% aeriated salt.

      [I had bought more rope and more artificial plants for spawning material, but they spawned unexpectedly before I could add them to the pond. I also had a new 17” ginrin showa male in quarantine that I had considered adding to the mix if they waited long enough, but that did not happen either.]

      Here is a photo taken shortly after the spawning. The slimmed down Doitsu (leather) female (22”) is on the left. I've only had her a few months, and I am not sure of her age. The males are fully scaled. The reddest one in the lower right is a seven-year-old male (24"). The 26" chunky male above him is eleven years old. The 21" kin showa male in the top right is three years old. More info and photos to follow ... Matt
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    2. #2
      delbert is offline Supporting Member
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      Nice !! Good Luck

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      Steve Sibly is offline Senior Member
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      Hi Matt,

      There some nice Showa's there loving the Doitsu an Showa on the right, Thunderstorm most likely the trigger for spawn i'd say, shame you didn't get the Gin Rin in the mix what a combo then.
      I'd like to see a Kin Doitsu Showa that would be awesome. Looking forwards to progress Pics.

      Nice job Matt.

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      Thanks guys. Spawning showa is a new thing for me. Here are a few more photos of the adults.
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      Can't wait to see the results!

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      delbert is offline Supporting Member
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      I like the old red male

    7. #7
      Matt24's Avatar
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      At 9 pm on May 12, 61 hours after they finished spawning, the water has cooled to 59 F. I gave the filter a good rinse. None have hatched, but I see eyes looking back at me from some of the eggs, the majority of which appear to be fertilized (tea colored rather than white). You have to look pretty close.

    8. #8
      Roger's Avatar
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      Matt, I think the spawning material is good to get them going, and good for transferring to a clean hatching tank, but the majority of the hatch will come from the spawning tank sides. I started a separate infusoria tank with boiled lettuce leaf, chopped celery and clearzyme bacteria, the block type from Home Depot. At the beginning I got a high ammonia reading and eventually the water cycled and turned green. It is then that I added yeast and sugar. The yeast killed off the algae and the water went from dark green to light milky green. Then the lettuce and chopped celery broke down and the sponge filter released brown water when I squeezed them. It also had a earthy smell to it, at that point there was no ammonia, nitrite or nitrate in the infusoria tank. The water eventually turned clear. Starting an infusoria tank was a good idea because it cycled the bio media and sponge filters. It also provided beneficial bacteria that I used to break down the left over eggs in the spawning tank. After the bacteria broke down the left over eggs, I used a water hose on trickle to push all the muck on the bottom into a pile on one side and I used a half inch pvc pipe to suck up the muck and wala a clean tank. I started the infusoria tank the same day they spawned.
      Last edited by Roger; 05-13-2015 at 03:40 AM.

    9. #9
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      5/14/2015 (Day 0), hatching began about 8 pm in 62 F water, 108 hours (4.5 days) after the spawning completed. Part of the time the water was around 58 F, which slowed things down. If I gently swoosh one of the rope tassels, I see 5 or 6 fry swim out. Should be a lot more hatching over the course of the night.

      Thanks Roger. Sounds like you have the feeding down to a mad science. I plan to go with a simple yeast and pulverized pellets this year since it seemed to get most of them off to a good start last year, and fairly evenly, with few tobi. Hopefully, that will work again. The fry are in an 1800 gallon lined pond that is well established with filtration and some green algae growing on the sides.

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      delbert is offline Supporting Member
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      1800 gal should give them plenty of room too grow.

      What are the dimensions of the fry pond

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    11. #11
      Matt24's Avatar
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      Quote Originally Posted by delbert View Post
      1800 gal should give them plenty of room too grow.

      What are the dimensions of the fry pond
      It's a rectangle with sloped sides, roughly 15 feet by 9 feet and 27" deep. It has a lot of shade, and I find that if I turn off the UV, the water doesn't really get green, just brown like tea, but there is some hair algae on the sides in some places. Here is a picture taken last year. The two-by-fours support orchard netting for protection.

      I think the hatching may be done. There seems to be quite a lot of fry at this stage sitting around on the sides, more than from last year's spawn.
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      You should be feeling pretty good Matt
      Lots of fry and space

    13. #13
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      So far, so good. At noon today, 64 hours after hatching began, some are swimming in open water, but most are sitting on the sloped sides. I think some still have a little yoke sack left, while others do not. In good light, one can easily see the difference between those that have substantial black (maybe ~30%) and those that are yellow or white (maybe ~70%).
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      looking good Matt.

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      Good fry pics !!! Matt

    16. #16
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      Congrats!!!!

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      That is fun. Thanks for sharing.

    18. #18
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      Thanks everyone. Here are some of the fry 10 days after hatching. They have thickened up some and the yellow is getting brighter. Still looks like about 30% have a lot of black, and the others are mostly yellow. You can see some difference in size, but they are fairly uniform.
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    19. #19
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      Here is a summary of my efforts to keep fry out of my pump. My 3000 gallon per hour submersible pump is probably larger than most people use with their fry, but it is offset some by the fact that the fry pond is fairly large (1800 gallon roughly 15 feet by 9 feet and 27" deep with sloped sides). So there is a lot of room for fry to get out of any strong current. To keep leaves out of the pump, the pump is enclosed in a 5 gallon bucket with a lid, and the bucket has lots of 1/4" holes drilled in it. Even though fry can easily get through the holes and into the pump, I have been able to raise many hundreds of fry to selection size in each of the last three years. So apparently, a lot of fry manage to avoid the pump.

      After seeing how some on this forum have tried to protect fry from pumps or overflows, I decide to see if I could improve the number of fry that I raise that way. I did not start with mosquito netting, since I suspected, and others here have confirmed, that tiny fry can get through. So the day they hatched, I put an old T-shirt around the pump bucket. This worked fine for about two days. But once enough tiny debris gathered on the T-shirt at the places where the 1/4" holes were drilled, they clogged them up. I had wondered if that might happen, and expected the pump to slow down. But surprisingly, the sides of the bucket caved in badly, though the pump still flowed fairly well. I then replaced the shirt with doubled-up cheesecloth (made of cotton fiber) after popping the dents out of the bucket. This allowed the water to flow without caving in the bucket, though I suspect some fry may have been able to get through. After two weeks I noticed that the cheesecloth appeared to be missing. I pulled up the bucket and found that the cheesecloth had about 90% disintegrated in just 2 weeks. So today I replaced what little was left of the cheesecloth with mosquito netting. I think that most of the fry are probably too large now to pass through it.

      Unrelated to the above, today I noticed my 8-year-old, 30" female soragoi (one of the fattest koi I've ever seen) push my 24" female hariwake against the pond wall kind of the way a male might when wanting to spawn. It was kind of subtle, so I just made a mental note of it. Later that afternoon the female soragoi did the same thing to my 30" female kujaku, but this time the soragoi swished her tail vigorously. So the intent was much more obvious. I have spawned and raised fry from each of these three females in the past. So there is no doubt they are all female, and they are all carrying lots of eggs right now. I had seen young female koi (1 or 2 years old) act a little like this before, but I had not seen it with an older large koi. I guess it shows that while pre-spawning type behavior can often help one determine if a koi is male or female, it can sometimes be deceiving.

    20. #20
      Roger's Avatar
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      Matt, I tried raising newly hatch fry in a mosquito net. It was a nightmare and total failure. They swam through.

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