Very nice Orlando. That top male showa is a a real eye-catcher. Strong sumi, nice balance.
Very nice Orlando. That top male showa is a a real eye-catcher. Strong sumi, nice balance.
Matt those koi were in that pool for about 3 hours while I was transferring water from one tank to another and that sumi holds very well and strong on some of them it did fade a little but these are young fish and I have to agree with you that Showa is a stunner here are 2 more that I missed posting,. These I believe are the best Tategoi of the bunch
How are those 19 doing?
Well there are 16 in the running, thanks for asking. They are definitely growing and developing now that am done with the higher water temperatures from summer I can resume feeding a little more till the end of December some of them will go to the CFKS next March to see if they can find new homes and all only keep the one's I want to move forward with that being the pickle since am targeting the one's with the best genes I've had friends ask me what makes me keep a Shiro vrs another Shiro and to me is not hard to make that desicion since the first and most important factor for me is the white once I make my selection they get logged in my book and are assigned a number. It's what makes it fun keeping a koi in the hopes that I can improve what I started with and yet knowing that koi will not participate for two to three year's and hoping it stays together and healthy, but that's what I enjoy the most watching them develop and grow it's what keeps me focused on the future. This koi breeding takes year's to see if the desicion one makes in the past will pan out 3 or 4 yrs down the road all I can say now is time for a bigger yard
Nice setup Orlando!! What's the source of the large white tanks against your house? Do these tanks have separate filtration systems, or is there a common system handling the load? I'd like to hear how you manage your water quality.
The tanks on the left are individual set ups with their own sponge filters I make myself out of 1" pvc pipes each one has 4 or 5 sponge filters that I clean about once every month they are made to handle about 500 gals per hour and they become spawning tanks in the spring and later in the year they hold small koi by grade as I sort thru them all attach a couple of pictures at the end. The three large tanks near the house are all one system that's gravity fed they are around 900 gals in capacity each if you look carefully in front of the tanks well towards the center of the path you can see ball valves on each of them I can literally shut of one tank from the system for anything that happens and keep the system running that system is ran by my version of Frankenstein you'll see it's got 4 stages, the first three are all mechanical filters addressing solids removal and the last one is my biobed. The first stage when I was working on it it was treaky getting the pipe height correct since it's a static filter water comes in thru the barrel wall and I followed with two 45* to make a long sweep 90* that pipe sits about 3" below the above water line in the main tanks to maintain constant water flow thru the system as the water overflows it's got to change direction downwards because of a large 7gallon bucket with an extension from another 5 gal bucket in order to force the downward push as far down as I was allowed by the inlet pipe with the 2 45* I've mentioned earlier then the up flow begins and the water must travel thru hanging brushes I have placed just before the exit to the second stage that's about a 50 gal vortex with an additional matala black mat I force the water to up flow thru onto the third stage another 55 gal blue drum with a 3" street 90 seending the water upwards thru 3 more rows of hanging brush filters then it over flows onto my biobed there once the water enters it must come in direct contact with a coral rock that weighs about 7 pounds and it continues as an up flow thru my bio media to be returned back to the 3 tanks using 1200 gal pump to the tanks adjusting the flow with 1" ball valves. I only clean the first two stages twice per week got it down to half an hour each time and that's about it, old school, simple, pretty effective and no moving parts to ever get clogged or fail if it's got one negative is the foot print it's about 8 square feet so for someone with a small area it probably wouldn't work If you look hard enough you can see there's an 8' tank behind all of these that's where the younger fry are kept. and there's another 400 gal tank behind the house in my back porch that can't be seen in the picture. My apologies I missed your question about the tanks they were planters many years ago I purchased them from one of the koi club member s back in 2014 where did he get them from maybe a nursery don't really know, he was also using them as koi tanks.
Last edited by Orlando; 10-23-2021 at 06:48 PM.
A serious operation and impressive set-up for many batches of little ones Orlando. Watch those stabby plants. You could put an eye out with that.