Showa Growout Results!

[Ryan S.]

Offical Showa results. Otherwise known as the Roddy awards.

Best Showa

1ST Place - Roddy Conrad

2ND Place - Roddy Conrad

3RD Place - Douglas Law

Most Growth Showa

1ST Place - Roddy Conrad

2ND Place - Roddy Conrad

3RD Place - Chris Devincenzi

Best Finish Showa

Roddy Conrad

Showa Tatagoi

Chris Devincenzi

Here is one of Roddy's awards, the other 4 can be surprises.

[cindy]

Congrats! :clap:

[Ryan S.]

Best Showa - Roddy

[Ryan S.]

Most Growth Showa Roddy

[Flounder]

NIce!!!

[stephen]

Offical Showa results. Otherwise known as the Roddy awards.

Best Showa

1ST Place - Roddy Conrad

2ND Place - Roddy Conrad

3RD Place - Douglas Law

Most Growth Showa

1ST Place - Roddy Conrad

2ND Place - Roddy Conrad

3RD Place - Chris Devincenzi

Best Finish Showa

Roddy Conrad

Showa Tatagoi

Chris Devincenzi

Here is one of Roddy's awards, the other 4 can be surprises.

Roddy, Please send me 55 gallon drum of pp.:woo:

[Leekinneykoi]

:cool: :cool: Thanks Ryan, and congrats to all the winners, and a special:attaboy: to Roddy, a man that knows his stuff.;) :yes:

[Limpet]

Congrat's to all who entered and finished...

[luke-gr]

Wow! That first (best) Showa really is striking!

[Just Pondering]

Congradulations. I gotta get some of that pp too

[savannahrobinson]

Wow! That best showa has some finishing still to do, too! :yes: VERY impressive.

[mitchkin5]

Congrats Roddy.....thats a beautiful showa! :D:

[sweetpea]

WTG, Doc Roddy!!! That 1st showa is something else!!! :yes: :yes: :cool: :cool:

[Ryan S.]

Brady liked a good handfull of the showas that remained in the contest. I'm sure he will address some of them individually. I had asked him to hold comments untill results were posted. And is not even bragging about beating momo fish in growth yet. Its done Brady, you can start.

[Roddy Conrad]

Thanks for all the wonderful comments! Of course the breeding had to be there for them to turn out so nice.

As most of you know, the main key to good growth was regularly burning off the DOC's with PP as mentioned by Steven in his post. For this contest, I did that by pumping ~85% of the water out of the tank once a week, and dosing it with 5 PPM PP for a few days. In the meantime, the amount of water taken out of the tank was pumped immediately back from another tank which had already had the DOC's burned off with strong PP. So I had three 900 gallon tanks going for the growout contest, one in which the koi lived, and two other 900 gallon tanks for PP treatment of the water.

I ran only shower filtration on the growout pond, homemade, cheap, nothing elaborate.

I ran very high alkalinity (300 to 500 ppm) continually to enable the shower filter to do its thing at maximum efficiency.

I kept GH in the medium range with calcium chloride and Epsom salt addition at the start of the growout, but since I never did any water change through the growout, only one addition of the calcium chloride and Epsom salt did the trick to bring hardness into the right range using my ultrasoft city water supply.

It works for me as you can see.

Whether it works for you depends on lots of little details, many of which I taught myself through careful experimentation.

The growout koi are now out in the big pond with the really big koi and doing quite well. A picture of one of their new swim mates is shown below in a 36 inch show bowl, as you can see the gin rin showa measures to be 31 inches long, with what I assume is a decent body shape. This pic was taken two weeks ago when we were moving the koi from our indoor koi pond to our outdoor koi pond. This big girl has been in the water through roughly 800 of my PP DOC burnout treatments of my main two koi ponds, and, done properly, as you can hopefully see, the low level PP DOC burnout treatments don't hurt my koi, in my hands, with my head guiding the process.

[stephen]

As most of you know, the main key to good growth was regularly burning off the DOC's with PP as mentioned by Steven in his post. For this contest, I did that by pumping ~85% of the water out of the tank once a week, and dosing it with 5 PPM PP for a few days. In the meantime, the amount of water taken out of the tank was pumped immediately back from another tank which had already had the DOC's burned off with strong PP. So I had three 900 gallon tanks going for the growout contest, one in which the koi lived, and two other 900 gallon tanks for PP treatment of the water.

Roddy - That pp regimine is more like ozone oxidation as it only oxidizes water that is separated from the pond & is not in contact with the fish. Excellent job my friend:bow: & I hope to give you a bit of competition in the new growout contest:)

[Simi Koi]

great job Roddy!!!

[redhotkoi]

Roddy

Congrats :yes: :yes:

Great job the showa looks awesome.

I understand the koi elitist concern about PP but you have proven that when it is done property it is very effective. I would like to see the top guy's come and compete in next year contest.

[jnorth]

Congrats! :)

[Ronin-Koi]

Wow, what fine examples of Lotuslandkoifarm.com showa! Roddy and Brady should be proud. Roddy, to help me understand your thinking, by using the PP to eliminate the DOCs regularly, is this equivalent to doing massive (85%) water changes on a weekly basis? How is your system preventing nitrate buildup? The PP and/or shower filter doesn't eliminate nitrates, right?

Also, What did you feed them, how much, and how often?

Thanks,
- Wayne, wants a Brady showa like the "best showa" winner.

[Rita in Il]

Congrats to all! :yes: :yes: :yes:

[L5Vegan]

How is your system preventing nitrate buildup? The PP and/or shower filter doesn't eliminate nitrates, right?
Not Roddy, but the shower filter keeps the nitrates down. :yes:
Dan

[Roddy Conrad]

Wow, what fine examples of Lotuslandkoifarm.com showa! Roddy and Brady should be proud. Roddy, to help me understand your thinking, by using the PP to eliminate the DOCs regularly, is this equivalent to doing massive (85%) water changes on a weekly basis? How is your system preventing nitrate buildup? The PP and/or shower filter doesn't eliminate nitrates, right?

Also, What did you feed them, how much, and how often?



The PP treatment is equivalent to doing a massive water change as you suggest.

Nitrates are kept extremely low by the shower filter as said above.

The feed rate was not particularly high, and I did not use an automatic feeder. All we did was throw a handful of koi pellets in the tank anytime we saw there were no pellets floating, probably 6 to 8 times a day.

The coloration was helped by keeping the GH in the right range.

Again, I appreciate all the kind remarks, and the conclusion of the growout contest coming together.

[Marie]

Congratulations to all

[carrie]

Wow...beautiful Showa.....congrats!

[mike pfeffer]

It is interesting how the sumi came up in the finnage. Makes one wonder how breeders can correctly identify customer koi that get harvested out of the mud ponds.

[Gene]

It is interesting how the sumi came up in the finnage. Makes one wonder how breeders can correctly identify customer koi that get harvested out of the mud ponds.

I have three tosai Showa that Fujio San just put back into one of his mud ponds. He only put 49 koi in that pond. If one of the koi changes so much that it can not be identified by the photo I'd expect the process of elimination would determine which one it was.

[luke-gr]

Roddy, do I understand correctly about using PP (I know next to nothing) ........

Do you only need to adjust your water parameters once? kH and gH stay put since you are not actually doing water changes using new water, you are using water that is pre-treated?:thinking:

I have very low kH and gH but dont think it is worth chasing since I am using my creek for a flow through and any work I would do would be constantly diluted.

Sorry, I know the above is not worded well.

[Ryan S.]

For the long term keepers there is probably nothing you can do in your case since you are on creek feed. If you had fish you wanted to condition for show you could move them into closed system (even keep a show tank or pool on hand for this), and use higher GH water and color feeds to make them pop. This can certainly hurt them long term but not many fish are going to complete as adults anyways.

[Koimum]

Congrats to Roddy and Chris!

[cindy]

Wow! Way to go Roddy and Congrats Brady! That Showa speaks volumns on what you're doing.

[tommyd]

Cograts Roddy! :cool: You have shown what can be expected out of great stock from Brady. Obviously, Brady has a great breeding program going and the talent to spot good prospects at an early age. :yes: Keep up the great work gentlemen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D: :yes:

[Roddy Conrad]

Roddy, do I understand correctly about using PP (I know next to nothing) ........

Do you only need to adjust your water parameters once? kH and gH stay put since you are not actually doing water changes using new water, you are using water that is pre-treated?:thinking:

I have very low kH and gH but dont think it is worth chasing since I am using my creek for a flow through and any work I would do would be constantly diluted.

Sorry, I know the above is not worded well.

KH is used by the biofilter, but since I intentionally run the KH in the 300 to 600 ppm range with baking soda, the alkalinity stays high.

GH is also slowly used up as calcium precipitates to avoid high pH swings, but certainly it is not used up at a high rate, and the recovered water with PP is going to be a lot richer in hardness than my source tap water, which has no detectable hardness.

I agree with the response above that if you are using a flow through system from creek water, it is pointless to attempt to adjust water parameters with any chemical additions.

The PP treatments I use have historically been the subject of many discussions, some of the discussion was even occasionally pleasant and entertaining. That process requires constant judgement decisions about how to do it, however, so it is not an easy "cookbook recipe".

[Roddy Conrad]

It is interesting how the sumi came up in the finnage. Makes one wonder how breeders can correctly identify customer koi that get harvested out of the mud ponds.

We had to take pictures every few weeks to make sure we kept track of which koi was which. Please be aware that my very high KH, meaning running it always in the 200 ppm to 600 ppm range, favors wonderful development of deep sumi. So the same koi probably would not have as much sumi in a different pond, and certainly the same fish had lots less sumi in Brady's farm ponds where we picked up the koi in late February, 2005.

Without keeping track of these koi every few weeks, it would have been relatively difficult to identify them precisely for the growout contest.

All I am trying to say is the koi really did change coloration a lot, and the change was intentional, I like my showa with plenty of deep sumi.

Please notice the high KH and mid range GH also gave good beni development, and the extremely low nitrates gave excellent quality to the white areas on the showa (and all the other fish in the same water).

[koidoc]

Nice finish. Must have more showas that got crossed. The first two pictures are the same fish. But that last two are not. Korekome can not change like that and Hi can not migrate like that. sumi can pop rom no where but not Hi. Look how the first Hi is the same just sumi appeared at nice places. The econd pair is way too off.

[Koi Story]

The major change seen in the "Best Showa" pictures is uncommon; but Sumi is supposed to be a bit unpredictable. There’re a lot of Sumi changes in the “Best Growth” Showa pictures also. Particularly, the notorious Motoguro and the Sumi coming up from the abdomen—Yama-moyo—at the koi’s right side developing from where there was no sign of it in the picture taken seven months before. But then again, sumi can be unstable in Showa.

It’s the fast changes in the Hi-moyo of the two "Most Growth Showa" pictures that are too much. The Hi covering the head down to the lips in the first picture, receded back to the eye-line in a Kutsubera pattern after seven months. The Hi at the shoulder’s right grew down from the back to reach the middle line; the Hi at its left side moved upwards. The two steps, which are separated in the first picture turned into a continuous pattern. The first Hi step bridged to the second one at an area where the separation was larger. The Hi spot grew to reach past the dorsal fin’s start. The small group of scales that form a diffuse Hi spot moved to another place and changed form. A high quality Showa has a stable Hi and a more stable and predictable Sumi.
Could these be the pictures of two different koi?

ks

[Koi Story]

Sorry, the picture didn't upload file too large.

ks

[koidoc]

Yes two different koi for second one. I hope awards not based on before and after. No one with any water can make a rabbit come out of a hat.

[Ryan S.]

All fish in contest were judged by single ending picture and given measured size for each fish. I threw the other pics together just for this thread but did so quickly and may have mixed them up.

[woodyaht]

Congratz Roddy! :yes: :yes: :cool: :cool:

[Ryan S.]

Brady?

[L5Vegan]

Yet another question for Roddy.
Since low level PP treatments in the pond do such a good job for you at burning off DOC's and growth inhibitors why did you decide to go with the higher dose separate from the fish in this case?
Did you see any significant differences with this approach to using PP, than you have seen in the past with the low level treatments in the pond w/ the fish?
I'm assuming that over the winter they received your standard in pond treatments.
Dan

[Roddy Conrad]

There is no difference in results to using PP in the pond versus using PP in water out of the pond to burn off the DOC's, WHEN IT IS DONE IN MY HANDS. However, others seem to have some difficulty understanding how to do it properly in the water with the fish, so I thought I would demonstrate a somewhat "safer" way in the growout experiment for the average ponder.

And, YES, during the winter the growout koi recieved the same treatment as the rest of the school of koi in my inside koi pond, meaning regular low level PP burnouts. The growth rate is a lot less in the winter in the inside pond, since I don't heat it. Since it is on a cold basement floor, water temperature runs in the low 60's to high 50's all winter, and the koi don 't eat as much or grow as much at that lower temperature. But they do grow some.

[Brady Brandwood]

Congratulations Roddy, Doug, & Chris for your excellent results and recognition in growing and raising your Showas!!!

The "tategoi" portion was good tough competetion, with several Showas in consideration. Tough because my Showas tend to finish slowly over several years, and we only watched them for one, and several were still showing very underdeveloped coloration, but excellent promise. These Koi are all just 24 months old at this point. The females could take 8 to 10 years to fully develop.

Some characteristics I took into consideration were

body shape (at the age), size, or growth over the 1 year period - which offers an indicator of the future size potential as adult,

the pattern potential - with the future of the pattern and overall balance playing a large role,

and the "look" of the beni, and the sumi at this size and age.

All of the "now" photos showed beni that was destined to become more thick and solid - including Roddy's S7, which at first glance looks to be finishing, but actually has a lot of very positive color development still to happen in the future.

The Koi that won "Best Tategoi" had the best package overall to be labelled "The Showa with the most future potential".

Many thanks to all who participated with my American born Showas! We have a lot to be proud of when we look at the results of the grow-out competetion across the board. Roddy grew his Showa to the largest Koi of the entire competition! Very impressive!

Best Wishes,
Brady Brandwood

[Brady Brandwood]

Sandy recently sent me a new photo of her Showa from the KoiPhen Lotus Land Koi Farm Grow-Out.

This Showa went on to be awarded Young Grand Champion at the Southern Koi Expo. Here's a comparison of her development, from tosai, when she got it, to now. Sandy's done an excellent job raising this fish!

Best Wishes,
Brady Brandwood

http://www.fototime.com/{D732AEB8-41AF-4298-9D7C-C609B210DE7F}/picture.JPG

[Rudy]

Well Limpet (Rick) showed his today and I noticed that this thing went dead.
I'd like to see more that came from Brady since we now have more coming.

I know that this one has been sen before but to get it started here is mine. Rick please join in and the rest that also received them.
Roddy ... hello :wave: ;)

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