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    Thread: Ginrin Showa Spawn 2020

    1. #1
      Matt24's Avatar
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      Ginrin Showa Spawn 2020

      Got up this morning (May 15) to see my ginrin showa spawning in 63 F water. The female ginrin showa that spawned last year with a little male, has grown enough that I felt it was safe to put her with that male's dad, a ~25” ginrin male showa with a better pattern and a more robust build that his kid. So we'll see what we get.

      A week earlier, I had moved them to the 500 gallon tub (filled to 350). Not that I thought they would spawn right away in the 56 F water, but I wanted to make sure the female did not get into an accidental flock spawn in the main pond under a full moon. I put spawning ropes nearly all the way around the edges, which was more than last year, and wrapped a third rope around a weighted pipe laid in the bottom of the tub.

      A cool snap the brought the water temp down to 51 F by the morning of May 12. So this morning's spawn was following a 12 F degree rise in 3 days from 51 F to 63 F. It was 7 days after a full moon, a 50% moon. Some light rain had already moved through, and a bigger thunderstorm was on the way. Barometric pressure was 29.12 and slowly rising.

      They did a good job distributing the eggs around on all the spawning ropes, both on the sides and the pipe on the bottom. I returned them to the big pond at after a 3 hour bath in 75 gal of 0.27% aeriated salt (1.9 lb).

      I then changed out a lot, considerably more than half, of the tub water with big pond water without exposing the eggs to the air and cleaned the filter. Parameters at 6 pm were temp 63 F, ammonia 0.25, nitrite 0.0, PH 7.8, KH 70. Both parents are eating. The male is moving slow, but the female, now skinny, is moving even faster than normal and eating well.

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    2. #2
      Matt24's Avatar
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      Here are the parent koi, photos taken today. The female is the one with very little white.

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    3. #3
      Orlando is offline Senior Member
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      I really like the female looking forward to your updates:-)

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      Good job Matt

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      Matt24's Avatar
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      Thanks guys. The female is a four-year-old that I got from a local dealer who said it was imported by Pan Intercorp. I got the male (now eight years old) second hand from a guy that likes to show his koi and only keeps females and says he got it from Andrew's Koi International.

      The water temp has cooled to 61 F as of 8 pm, day after spawning. … This may take a while.

      Below is a picture of the overall setup during the spawning, hence the big bubbles. The cement blocks and the board were just there for extra weight on the cover to help make sure they stayed in the tub. Then there is a closer shot of the spawning ropes. Lastly, a poor photo of a rope tassel with eggs (day after spawning).

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    6. #6
      Matt24's Avatar
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      The ammonia was 0.3 ppm this morning. I added some Fritz ACCR to bind it, and probably will do so occasionally for a while. The water was still 61 F a little more than 48 hours after the eggs were laid. There are lots of eggs and most appear to be white, but some look okay.

      In effort to avoid having all the fry getting sucked into the pump, I am doing like what I did last year which seemed to work adequately.
      • I replaced the 500 GPH pump with a 300 GPH pump. At the head height of about two feet, I measure the flow to be reduced to about 240 GPH. As before, the pump is in a cage made using two plastic plant baskets. The holes in the cage are way to big to stop small fry from getting in but …
      • Inside the cage, there is a mesh bag around the pump with square holes that are about 0.1" x 0.1", probably still too big to stop tiny fry, but will stop them once they gain some size after a few days.
      • In the meantime, I plan to use cheese cloth to help keep the tiny fry out of the pump. Before they start hatching, I plan to wrap a double layer of cheese cloth around the pump basket. Cheese cloth degrades after only a few days. But in theory, it will last long enough for the fry to get up to a safe size. But I will wait until near the time I expect them to hatch, so the cheese cloth does not break down too much before the fry are swimming.

    7. #7
      goclassv's Avatar
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      Matt, Thank you for posting these threads year after year. I really appreciate it and learn so much from your experiences.

      I am desperately trying to get my koi to spawn earlier this year than late June. A spawn at 63 degrees is amazing! A week ago I turned on the heater in my pond to attempt to speed up the process and have raised my temperatures from right around 60 to 75 degrees just today. I added spawning brushes on the same day. I have only been feeding my fish fairly heavily for the last 5 days. Not sure what I need to do to trigger the spawn, other than another 25% water change (which I am doing twice a week at this point).

      I guess my question for you is whether you think there was anything in particular you did to get your fish to spawn at such a low temperature. Possibly the incoming storm or the extra spawning ropes? Or are you conditioning your fish in a certain way? Or is separating the females necessary?

      Either way, nice work and best of luck this season!

    8. #8
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      I wrapped the pump cage with the double layer of cheese cloth just before dark, about 84 hours (3.5 days) after the spawning. I checked the record of the last few seasons and then estimated that at these temperatures, hatching may be at around 4.5 days. I considered waiting until tomorrow morning so that the cheese cloth would last longer past hatching, but I figured that would be cutting it too close.

      Most of the spawns have had water around 70 F (upper 60's to lower 70's) during the period between spawning and hatching. In those 5 seasons, hatching occurred 50-60 hours. In two of the seasons, water temps stayed in the lower 60's down to about 60 F, and hatching took ~4.5 days. So since the temps this year have been 60-63 F, there may be hatching sometime tomorrow afternoon or night.

      Quote Originally Posted by goclassv View Post
      … whether you think there was anything in particular you did to get your fish to spawn at such a low temperature. Possibly the incoming storm or the extra spawning ropes? Or are you conditioning your fish in a certain way? Or is separating the females necessary?
      I usually just move the one female and 2-3 males to the spawning tub at the same time. This is the first time I've only included one male, since he is a bit larger than her. I don't do anything to condition them for spawning. They almost always need some type of spawning material to get going, but I think one spawning rope would get them going as well as ten. I just put in extras to get them to disperse the eggs more to improve oxygen to the eggs and thus improve hatch rate.

      Getting them to spawn can be tricky. Sometimes it happens on the first night. Sometimes it takes a week. Sometimes they won't go at all. But change seems to be a frequent driver, whether it's the first night in the new spawning tub or pond, a storm front, or a water change. My wife also has a theory that spawning may be more likely on days when fishing is good. She checked the Farmer's Almanac and found some correlation between the days the spawns have occurred and the best fishing days.

      I've heard some put a light over the pond at night, but I have not tried it. Other's say the full moon is best, but I've never noticed much correlation with that myself.

      I have on occasion misidentified a male as a female and vice versa, and found it true that you need one of each. Also, some koi behave differently than others. Once I had a group of three males and a female (properly identified) that wouldn't spawn. After several days of nothing, I added a second female, thinking the males might like her better. It worked! But not the way I intended. Not only was the koi not female, but he was far more aggressive at spawning than the other males. His instigating behavior got the original female going, and then they all joined in. Whatever works, I suppose!

    9. #9
      goclassv's Avatar
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      Thanks for the tidbits! I did a water change this evening, turned off my heater and put a lightbulb out over the pond. Temperature after the waterchange dropped from 75 down to 72. Hopefully that does it. Next year I'm going to figure out a spawning tank to hopefully speed up this process (and be a bit more selective like you about who gets to spawn with who).

    10. #10
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      The first ones started hatching at about 4 pm in 62 F water ~104 hours (a little under 4.5 days) after the spawn. Looks like there are a lot of them. Long way to go, but so far so good.

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    11. #11
      Matt24's Avatar
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      Quote Originally Posted by goclassv View Post
      ... I did a water change this evening, turned off my heater and put a lightbulb out over the pond. Temperature after the waterchange dropped from 75 down to 72. ...
      Sounds like good encouragement. Hope they'll get going soon.

    12. #12
      pondfishguy is offline Senior Member
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      Quote Originally Posted by Matt24 View Post
      I wrapped the pump cage with the double layer of cheese cloth just before dark, about 84 hours (3.5 days) after the spawning. I checked the record of the last few seasons and then estimated that at these temperatures, hatching may be at around 4.5 days. I considered waiting until tomorrow morning so that the cheese cloth would last longer past hatching, but I figured that would be cutting it too close.

      Most of the spawns have had water around 70 F (upper 60's to lower 70's) during the period between spawning and hatching. In those 5 seasons, hatching occurred 50-60 hours. In two of the seasons, water temps stayed in the lower 60's down to about 60 F, and hatching took ~4.5 days. So since the temps this year have been 60-63 F, there may be hatching sometime tomorrow afternoon or night.



      I usually just move the one female and 2-3 males to the spawning tub at the same time. This is the first time I've only included one male, since he is a bit larger than her. I don't do anything to condition them for spawning. They almost always need some type of spawning material to get going, but I think one spawning rope would get them going as well as ten. I just put in extras to get them to disperse the eggs more to improve oxygen to the eggs and thus improve hatch rate.

      Getting them to spawn can be tricky. Sometimes it happens on the first night. Sometimes it takes a week. Sometimes they won't go at all. But change seems to be a frequent driver, whether it's the first night in the new spawning tub or pond, a storm front, or a water change. My wife also has a theory that spawning may be more likely on days when fishing is good. She checked the Farmer's Almanac and found some correlation between the days the spawns have occurred and the best fishing days.

      I've heard some put a light over the pond at night, but I have not tried it. Other's say the full moon is best, but I've never noticed much correlation with that myself.

      I have on occasion misidentified a male as a female and vice versa, and found it true that you need one of each. Also, some koi behave differently than others. Once I had a group of three males and a female (properly identified) that wouldn't spawn. After several days of nothing, I added a second female, thinking the males might like her better. It worked! But not the way I intended. Not only was the koi not female, but he was far more aggressive at spawning than the other males. His instigating behavior got the original female going, and then they all joined in. Whatever works, I suppose!
      Just thought I'd share my experience this year. 1800 gallon pond. Raised temp with heaters from 70-74 deg on May 5th. Did a 50% water change at 4pm on May 6th (1 nights before full moon) with heated water from my house. Maintained temp at 75 degrees. Flock spawn occurred 5am-9am following morning.Started removing eggs at 7am on May 7th. Indoor eggs kept in aquarium at 77 degrees started hatching in 46 hours, all seemed to have hatched by 60 hours, removed spawning ropes at 72 hours.

      I've tried numerous times with different types of fish to induce spawning with lights but anecdotally I find little improvement over a full moon, whether the fish can see the moonlight or not (some tanks are completely covered or indoors). I've got to believe its got more to do with the magnetic pull. Grunion always spawn on certain days whether they can see the moon or not (overcast)

    13. #13
      Matt24's Avatar
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      Quote Originally Posted by pondfishguy View Post
      ... Maintained temp at 75 degrees. … kept in aquarium at 77 degrees started hatching in 46 hours ...
      That's fast hatching, but in line with the trend I've noticed for those temperatures. Also, I had wondered how the position of the moon in the sky affecting the spawn via gravity, regardless of the light.

    14. #14
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      By 1 pm on Day 1, about 21 hours after the first ones hatched, the vast majority of the fry were hatched, but there were still a few eggs with eyes. However, the ammonia was getting pretty high, somewhere around 1.0 ppm, and I felt like I should not delay clean-up any longer. I raise the fry in the same tub where the spawn occurs. So I need to do lots of cleaning. I removed the three spawning ropes, shaking off the tassels in the water to avoid removing fry with the ropes. I then used a net with medium sized holes to dip our most of the eggs while hopefully not removing many fry. After lots of water changes with water from my ponds, ammonia was down to 0.4, nitrite 0, temp 63 F. I've been using Fritz ACCR to bind ammonia.

      Now it's dark after Day 3 with the water temp still just 64 F. A few of the fry are swimming around, but most are still sitting on the algae on the sides. They seems a little slow about becoming free swimmers. Maybe the cool water that makes them hatch slow also makes them take longer to become free swimming.

      I've been feeding 2 tablespoons of yeast and 1 tablespoon of pulverized adult pellets mixed in pond water over a whole day. I'll usually gradually step up pulverized adult pellets and reduce the yeast over several days. One unexpected result of the virus outbreak was a shortage of yeast. I couldn't find any in the grocery stores around here. But fortunately my wife had some extra for cooking that I could use.

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      Yeast shortage out here too. I bought a 2 pound brick on Amazon. We bake weekly and keep it in the freezer. LOL
      My fry that are outdoors are still tiny. Water temps 60-74 (its been a really cool May). Feeding Hikari first bites, decapsulated brine shrimp and 47% protein flake.

    16. #16
      Matt24's Avatar
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      Day 7 and still 64 F water, so not much growth. Here is what came from a couple of random dips with a small net. Having had a showa spawn two years ago with only 8% dark fry, I am liking what I see in this sampling.

      Name:  showa fry Day 7 5-26-2020b.jpg
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    17. #17
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      A photo from yesterday, 15 days old. Until now, the water temps have been in the lower to mid-60s, and they have not grown much. But it has started to warm up fast, into the mid to upper 70s F. So maybe we will start seeing more progress. Samples indicate about 30%, perhaps slightly more, are dark fry. Looks like I will need to do a dark fry selection soon.

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    18. #18
      Matt24's Avatar
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      I started to try to do a kuroko selection this morning and had to stop. There are way too many at this point for my simple netting method, not two thousand or four thousand but many thousands. I could not even guess, but toiling for hours would hardly make a dent. A good problem to have I guess. So I decided to let them grow some more, knowing they will weed there own numbers down. Maybe I will just keep feeding high protein to help them grow and limit the number of tobi. I may also dip the net in a few times occasionally to check for and remove any tobi that I find. That way I hope that mostly just the smallest and weakest will get eaten, and I can avoid having a lot of medium sized ones get eaten. In time, they should be big enough and in smaller numbers, which will help in at future kuroko selection.

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      That’s a lot of fry to sort through.
      Looking good Matt

    20. #20
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      After I gave up on the massive kuroko selection a couple of days ago, I tried culling a few at a time using two methods.

      (1) The first was to use a large fine net to dip up about 50, and then use a small net to dip out the dark ones (all but the tiniest) and put them back in the tub. In order to be quick, I did not worry if I got a few yellow ones in the process. Then I might have 30 yellow ones and 4-5 scrawny dark ones left in the net to remove.

      (2) I used a big net with 1/8” holes to swipe around the tub a bunch. Then raise and lower the net in the water a few times to let little ones slip through. Then dump that net into the fine net (with water in it). Whats left may be half a dozen medium sized dark fry to dip out and lots of light colored fry to remove, mostly medium sized with a few tobi. After just a few minutes, I had culled maybe 250, wild guess, many of which were developing tobi.

      (3) Use an adult koi net to let almost everything go through, but only catch fry that are over about 1". This is good for removing tobi and keeping them from eating most of the fry

      I like the way it worked out, especially the second method. I'll probably try it a few more times in coming days, maybe eventually stepping up to an adult koi net which has larger holes when the fry get bigger. With these methods, I can just do it until I need a break and stop. No need to do it all at once.
      Last edited by Matt24; 06-27-2020 at 03:50 PM. Reason: Added method #3

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