Hey, Matt!
Hey, Matt!
Ki Shusui Project : 300k Challenge : 500k Build : Flock Spawn Jamboree : Our Ki Midori Champions
Ten minute video of Russ Peters sexing our future ki shusui oyagoi. : http://youtu.be/AhROs1cjC18
Updated for the 2018 Harvest: What is "ki shusui?" Short version http://www.kishusui.com
Twelve seconds that are the entire point of the last seven years!
https://youtu.be/zNqTJgM3lpY
If you're reading this, you're on Team Ki.
Kichi loves company. Max
K-POTY 2014
The frisbee idea - is that for ease of clean up and to keep the bottom free of debris? For better viewing? Would love to see a picture of the fry eating on the frisbee, if you get a chance.
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Cheers,
Ci
Thanks y'all. I'll get some photos here soon.
The frisbee idea is still being tested for feeding them the frozen seafood chunks. So far it seems to be working well. I had used a plate sitting on a bucket in previous spawns.
Reasons for putting the food on an elevated plate: (1) Good for observing what little koi you have and their development. (2) Easy to tell when they are done eating and need more. (3) You don't overfeed and have uneaten food piling up on the bottom.
Possible advantages of hanging frisbee over using a plate sitting on a bucket: (1) Easy to drill holes in the plastic to hang them up. (2) Support strings are easily adjusted to desired height. (3) Won't tump over. (4) Won't be in the way when I net leaves etc off the bottom. (5) Frisbee has a vertical lip that should keep the fry from pushing the seafood chunk off of the plate. (6) With my pond having sloped sides, I can position the frisbee closer to the edge, which is easier to reach. (7) They come many colors, including blue.
Last edited by Matt24; 07-16-2018 at 08:14 AM.
The brain of a fry must develop along with the body. A fry's ability to perceive danger and recognize food seems to relate to size more than to age. For the small ones, I have to scatter the seafood mix and powdered pellets all around the sides. Even at 3/4" to 1", they are only marginally effective at locating the seafood chunks. Once they get a little over an inch, they come from all over the pond to the plate (or frisbee) to eat the weird chunk that they learn is food. The few larger fry in the tub are putting away far more than the thousands in the pond.
Collectively, they are just about through their first seafood batch of about 100 oz, and I put another batch in the freezer yesterday. This batch is is 87% seafood: 40% mackeral, 26% salmon, 21% tuna, and 13% pumpkin.
Last edited by Matt24; 07-17-2018 at 07:19 AM.
Day 45 after hatching, and I took a few pictures of three different sizes of little koi. First I got some from the little pond using a net with small holes to get mostly the smaller fry, about 5/8" to 7/8". Sorry about the low quality of the photos.
Next I got some from the little pond using an adult koi net with holes that most of the smaller fry would slip through. So these koi are a little bigger, about 1" to 1.25".
Finally, I netted some of the largest fry from blue tub. These range from about 1.25" to just over 2".
So here are some photos, not good quality, but they do show how the hanging frisbee set-up works. The brown thing is a rock to keep the frisbee submerged. The light tan colored chunk is the seafood. The diagonal reflection is of the 2x4 and one of the strings. These are the smaller fish in the little pond. I'd like to get similar photos of the larger fry in the blue tub, because they are more developed and really go after the food, but the water is to dark and murky in there to get a decent photo.
Those frisbee dining photos above were poor quality, even by my standards. So today I took some more with a little better lighting and focus.
It's a nice cloudy day with air temperature in the mid-80's. Great compared to the 106 F (41 C) a couple of days ago. The little pond got to 80 F in full shade, and the big pond, which gets a little more sun, was 83 F.
Your fry look great. I'm impressed how even sized they all are. I'll have to try your recipe and frisbee method next time around. It looks like you have white and yellowish fry too. In your experience, what types of koi do you get from those colors?
Thanks. Overall, their sizes vary a lot, but similar sized fry tend to hang out in about the same area or water level. So the photos of these mostly medium sized ones don't show the big ones that are down deeper or that I moved to the tub, nor the little ones in the shallows around the edges.
I netted the larger fry out of the murky 350 gallon to see what was in there after 5 weeks. I was worried I might find 90% of them missing and one 7" monster saying, "Don't look at me. I don't know where everybody went." Fortunately there were no giants, with the largest being 3” and several over 2”. Still, about 25% were missing. Look's like there is one fairly nice showa prospect and 4 or 5 decent prospects. The rest really look like longshots. This is not counting the much larger population of smaller fry in the little pond.
Next, after waiting ~8 weeks, I finally got to work on selection. With so many, growth has been rather slow. Hopefully, getting the numbers down will help. In retrospect, maybe I could have done much of this 2-3 weeks earlier. I think many of the key selection characteristics would have been visible at that point. If I have done so, the remaining fry might be a little bigger by now.
Given the size and the sloped sides of the little pond, I have no good way to net all the fry at once. So I have to net a few hundred at a time, which is about all I feel like going through at one sitting anyway.
I've found that I can catch different sizes of fry by using different netting methods.
- For the largest fry, I can put on a head-lamp and use an adult koi net at night, pulling the net in slowly to allow lots of small ones to escape through holes. This also helps with tobi prevention.
- For the medium sized fry, 0.75” to 1.25”, I can use an adult koi net in day, pulling the net in quickly to keep most of the medium fry from escaping through holes. The big fry are fast and wary and generally don't get caught in the net during the day, and most of the tiny ones pass through the net.
- For little fry, 1/2” to 3/4”, I can use a net with smaller holes and sweep it high along the shallow slopes by the edge where they like to hang out.
The largest three in the little pond were ~2.5”, but almost all the rest were under 1.5” and ranging all the way down to 0.5".
For the light colored fry (kohaku prospects), I selected those that showed good body shape (not deformed or wispy and frail) and had a substantial amount of orange, but not completly orange. So two colors and good shape.
I did the same for the darker fry (showa and utsuri prospects), except I paid no attention to colors, since they tend to develop in showa and utsuri when the koi are larger, maybe 1.5" to 2”. The darker fry are only about 8% of this spawn.
To this point I have not been looking much for the down-turned mouth (parrot face) issue that plagued last year's spawn. It is too hard to see on small fry, though I have seen it on a few of the larger fry, and it usually cannot be seen from above. Some of the larger fry don't seem to have that issue. Though that problem exists in substantial numbers, it does not seem to be as widespread as it was last year, which was practically all of them. This is despite using the same female adult and two of the three same males.
There are still many hundreds. Now we watch, feed, and wait a few more weeks for growth and pattern development.
I've been separating by size, gradually moving larger fry from the 1800 gallon pond to the 350 gallon tub, to thwart tobi and thereby improve survival rate. After reducing the numbers a lot in the pond, plus moving the larger ones to the tub, it had gotten to where the mass of koi in the tub was much more than in the pond. So it was time for me to swap them, reducing numbers further in the process, over the last couple of days. In the end, I moved 250+ of the larger fry to the pond and 150+ of the smaller fry (0.75" - 1") to the tub. The larger fry are mostly 1.5" - 2", with several 2.5" - 3.5", and the largest 4.5". Photos below …
[I will also guess there are ~300 others in the pond that have never been netted, as I did not do a drain down to catch them all. I just netted the vast majority for now.]
And more photos … 10 1/2 weeks after hatching. The bottom two photos are of the little ones that are still too small to tell all that much about them.
Here are a few photos of individual koi that I'm watching …
They look wonderful! You have some really nice looking ones in the selected koi you are watching.
I have a question about the downturned parrot faced issue you said you had before. I have a fry that seems to fit that description but I thought maybe it’s because it was possibly a black moor x koi cross. I can’t see barbells yet on it, but it has obvious koi coloring. I’ll post the picture on my “fry color” thread if you wouldn’t mind taking a look at it.
Matt!
Good job.
Great to see the patterns coming up. The one that you're watching jumped right out at me.
Keep on truckin.'
Ki Shusui Project : 300k Challenge : 500k Build : Flock Spawn Jamboree : Our Ki Midori Champions
Ten minute video of Russ Peters sexing our future ki shusui oyagoi. : http://youtu.be/AhROs1cjC18
Updated for the 2018 Harvest: What is "ki shusui?" Short version http://www.kishusui.com
Twelve seconds that are the entire point of the last seven years!
https://youtu.be/zNqTJgM3lpY
If you're reading this, you're on Team Ki.
Kichi loves company. Max
K-POTY 2014
Thanks Delbert / My2butterflies / Max!
My2butterflies: I put a reply to your question about facial deformities in your "fry color" thread.