You got a nice set up Matt
It would make life easier to be able to walk around all 4 sides of a pond
Overall, I am still not sure how this batch of fry is going to work out (never done showa before). A few have my interest, but I am not seeing anything really eye-catching so far, though I think many still need to cook a while.
I knew I had a large spawn, and my new technique of separating the larger fry from the small ones has helped keep the numbers high. But even knowing that, it turns out there were more than twice as many as I thought, far more than I had in each of the last 3 seasons combined. On the downside, only ~30% of the fry were dark, and there were also lots of gill deformities, plus a lightning strike that zapped a bunch of my neighbors electronics and also kinked up (nerve damage/partial paralysis) a few of the fry as well as 4 of the adult koi. Lots of the dark fry just refuse to grow. They are scrawny wisps that would look like mosquito larvae if the were more wiggly. If they have shown any indication of thickening up some, I am keeping them for now.
This batch is a little over 9 weeks old, and I did not cull much at all in the first 7 weeks. I just separated the large from the small. But I have reduced the numbers a lot in the last 2 weeks. Now I have 80 or so (mostly 1.5" to 2") in the 1800 gallon pond, about 60% of which are dark. Most of these still have not developed much color, and I wonder if they are going to. Lots of them are fully scaled or with a linear row of scales down the side. Some folks don't like the linear ones, but I am fine with them if the pattern and conformation are good.
This showa is one of the larger ones at about 3". Notice the color change in just six days. The picture on the left is from 7 days ago, and the second picture was taken yesterday.
Here are a few other larger fry:
There are also some hariwake, ogon, and kohaku that I am watching for now, as well as the alpha tobi that I moved to the big pond with my adult koi two weeks ago. It was 3" at that time, and the white has since come up. So it may have a chance at becoming a descent shiro utsuri.
These are the smaller fry, mostly under an inch. There are still several hundred of them in the tub. They still need to develop more before I can tell much. Despite lots of work, I still have a good bit of orange to pick out of there.
Thanks Delbert, I am pretty well able to do that. On the side shown in the upper right of the photo, I have to step up on the hill, but there is room to walk. On the side shown in the upper left, I generally have to reach over the rocks and plants, but if needed, I can stand on the levy.
Matt
Hi Matt ,
I'd get rid of the orange and white ones. What are you feeding them? I switched mine to freeze dried blood worms and brine shrimp at the 1/2 to one inch size. They seemed to grow quicker on that mix. I put pinch between my fingers and submerge the food into the tank. Now they come up and eat out of my hand. Some of those grey looking ones will amaze you as they go through some dramatic changes in the next few weeks.
Thanks for the encouragement guys. I plan to remove most of the light colored ones, but keep a few if a pattern bears watching.
Thanks for the feeding tip Jim. I had actually started feeding the smaller ones frozen blood worms this morning, as a supplement to the pulverized adult pellets. I had been supplementing with frozen brine shrimp prior to that, but until very recently, the numbers were so high that most probably were not getting any. These are in frozen cubes (not dried). Where do you get the freeze-dried ones? I thought I'd try to compare the cost, availability, and convenience to the frozen cubes.
I've seen a little hint of those dramatic changes, and I hope to see more soon. Just today I noticed a 2" utsuri with yellow coming up that was not there when I took their photos yesterday. I am pretty sure it is the one that just looks like an ochiba in the photos I took yesterday.
Matt ,
I get freeze dried blood worms ebay - in bulk. I kept two yellow one's to see what would happen - nothing worth keeping but they are still in the stock tank.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Bloodworms-F...item35dc9c0d43
I get mine at the same place. We call the bloodworms "crack" because the babies go wild over it. I have read that the nutritional content is not that great and so I only feed it once every day or two. I have been feeding mine mysis shrimp, silk worm pupae & 1/32" pellets.
Hi Matt,
I'm surprised how 6 days of development can make such a difference, Hopfully your Showa's will turn out how you want Mate, Ive never done Showa either so i can only imagine its really hard to know what to look for at a small size, But keep the pic's coming so i can use as a reference haha,
Cheeers
G'day Matt,
As Jim say's if you want showa remove the white and yellow ones to provide more growing space but at there current size you should be able to identify any possible kohaku if you did want to grow some on further. For me I would expect at this age for most to be over three inches at which point you get a good indication of what they will become. How much do you feed? they really need a lot. I would feed the ground pellets as a paste and you can add things like canned tuna, boiled pumpkin and peas all mashed together and mixed to a paste consistency. I also put garden worms through the blender and give these a couple of times a week.
Cheers
They sure love the blood worms and quickly learned to take them out of my hand, like you mentioned Jim. Thanks Jim and Anne for the suggestions on where I can get bloodworms at a better price.
I am thinking you mean the one with the orange on the face, a little black on the head, and the two black markings on the back. That one looks good. Glad to know they can change for the positive like that.
Thanks Steve, will do. Hopefully it will help in a positive sense and not turn out to just be a lesson in "what not to do". But we will see.
After 3 weeks of working on it, I've reduced the huge spawn by about 95%, and now 80% of those left are darker type. I'm just trying to get a few nice looking koi, regardless of variety, but I do really like showa and realize that showa and utsuri should be my best chance with this group of parents. Even though most of the fry (in the tub of small fry) are an inch or less, at this age I can tell (or at least I think I can tell) which of the light ones have no kohaku potential. I remove the solid colored ones and the ones without white noses or those that are almost all one color (orange or white). I keep the ones that appear to have two or more areas of color, which isn't many in this group.
I greatly underestimated how many more fry there would be if I separated them by sizes so they would not eat each other so much. For a few weeks, I was feeding them 5 to 7 tablespoons of pulverized powder, with a little frozen daphnia and brine shrimp. This is about what I would have fed in past spawns, but this group was several times more numerous, and I did not realize it until I started going through them in weeks 7 - 10. So, I'm sure now that I was underfeeding. But now that the numbers are much smaller, they should be getting plenty, though most are behind schedule. Thanks also for the recipes.
Matt
Any tips on how to cull the darker fry in a showa spawn?
At 11 weeks, most of mine are scattered between 1" and 3", and I have removed over 80% of the dark ones by removing:
- Deformities whenever they have become apparent
- Especially tiny, skinny, and weak
- Scattered scales
I suppose the next phase is to start removing some based upon lack of good pattern, once most of the dark ones are showing some pattern, some yellow/orange and/or white or bluish-gray. I have never done this with a showa spawn, but here is what I am thinking should be removed:
- Those that have remained totally black or dark gray. If this is correct, how large and how old should they be before doing this?
- Those that are speckled or have small blotches of color rather than having patches of color
- Those that have large areas of one color, maybe 2/3 of an entire side of the body with no pattern, just a solid area of yellow, white, or black
Does this sound right? Any other suggestions?
Thanks,
Matt
Your cull criteria sound OK but I would not be too harsh on the smaller group just yet, they change a lot and slowly. Shiro and Hi Utsuri should be fairly obvious in the bigger group and I would keep those with larger areas of color compared to the black and of the Showa type's keep those with the most balanced distribution of color with black being the lesser portion. I have found that too much black at this time generally over takes the fish as it grows.
Thanks Wombat. Yes, I was thinking I should allow the smaller ones more time for color development. I looked them over some today, and many are starting to show some changes. But I new nothing about black tending to expand as the koi grows, especially since to this point, it has mainly been the dark that has given way to white and yellow.
Hi Matt,
Sometime the grey one's develop into nice fish. I had a grey one last year with a small black spot on his head. It looked so much different than the rest. It took time but turned into a nice Tancho Showa. That one moved into the big pond this year. I currently have a few grey one's that are just starting to change. Beni and Sumi coming up. Showa fry go through so many changes. It may be worth considering putting a couple of dozen into a stock tank. Watch them closely for a few weeks to see how your line of fish change. This can be difficult to do with 1000 fry.
Jim
Good to hear how yours are changing Jim. I should be set up to observe how mine will develop over the next few weeks, as I now have them narrowed down to a couple of hundred.
Here are some in-pond photos showing the progression of the 1.5"-3" group at 80 days. Some color coming up, but nothing that looks much like the parents yet. Besides these there is the more numerous group of smaller fry and 3 larger ones that I moved to the big pond.
Nice thread looks like I should try some different foods