The showa spawned early this spring. Eggs have hatched, and there are now thousands of 6-day-old fry. The adults are:
Female: 25” showa, ~6 years old, fully scaled, just a little yellow-orange, looks like shiro utsuri from a distance
Male: 24” showa, 9 years old, fully scaled, red
Male: 24” ginrin showa, ~5 years old, fully scaled, orange
Male: 24” kin showa, 5 years old, fully scaled, yellow-orange (now fully recovered from ~40% paralysis caused by nearby lightning strike in July 2015)
I use an 1800 gallon pond for spawning / raising fry with a 2800 GPH submersible pump and a mature 100 gallon simple gravity fed filter. The night of 4/12 (night after a full moon) I moved the female and a male into the pond where the other two males had been for a while. I had added 5 home-made nylon spawning ropes all around the edges, with a double layer of them under the waterfall since they always seem to lay more eggs there. The water was only 61 F (16 C) but the forecast was for substantially warmer temperatures for the next several days. I figured that after several days the water would be up around 70 F and maybe they would spawn. But the showa decided it was already warm enough and were acting spawny the next night. Then a light rain started and continued overnight and they spawned the next morning, 4/14 (Good Friday), in 61 F water with barometric pressure of 30.08, slowly decreasing.
The spawning appeared only moderately vigorous, not as much splashing as is typical in warmer weather, but still effective. This female did not scatter her eggs as much as other females have in the past. She focused heavily on the ropes under the waterfall and along the two sides nearest the waterfall. Very few eggs got on the ropes along the other two sides, and she did not let as many fall to the bottom of the pond as previous females.
I removed the adults after 6 hours and returned them to the big pond after a 2 hour bath in 100 gal of 0.30% aeriated salt. Changed out ~55% of the little pond water with water from the big pond. It looks like roughly 75% of eggs were fertilized.
The forecasted warm weather never came, and the pond water never exceeded 64 F. So it took 4.5 days for the eggs to hatch. Before that, I put double layer of cheese cloth around the 5 gallon bucket (with holes drilled in it) that I keep the pump in. I think that helps keep fry out of the pump. The cheesecloth breaks down after a few days, but it seems to last until the fry get through the really vulnerable days. After hatching, I removed the 5 spawning ropes which had unhatched eggs on them. In addition to water changes and netting out debris (mainly oak tree tassels), I used some Ammo-lock to bind ammonia until the filter could catch up.
Started feeding 2 tblsp yeast with 3 tblsp powder from adult food pellets in about 4 or 5 feedings over a whole day, the day after hatching. Like last year, to help with growth, I plan to start supplementing their diet with protein using the Wombat-style blended seafood when they get around 2 weeks old.
From the evening of Day 2 to the morning of Day 5, a cold front dropped the water temp from 64 to 54 F, while raining nearly 4”. But it did not seem to bother the fry. It is now the evening of Day 6 (after hatching), and the water is 57 F. It is still somewhat difficult to tell the dark fry from the light, perhaps due to slower development in the cool water. So I don't yet have a good feel for what percentage of dark ones I've got, but will update as things progress. Below are some photos of the adults: