THey are looking good at this point. Agree that if the Kohaku was Ginrin it would be pretty awesome.
Let me know when to send you my address so you can ship some my way
Well it's been over 4 months with nothing much interesting to report. So I thought I'd do an update whether it is needed or not.
Since it has been such an unusually mild winter here, never having nightly lows below 20 F so far, that I thought I might get away with not covering the little ones' pond all winter. But they are now forecasting an arctic blast for next week to take lows to around 10 F several nights in a row, and will be brutal for states further north. So I removed the net covering today and replaced it with a double layer of plastic sheeting. I'm not sure at what temperature that is necessary, but just trying to be safe.
I took the opportunity to do a partial water change. Water is a bit green. I netted out some leaves, gunk, and a couple of frogs. In the process I netted up one little showa by accident and saw a couple of others come to the surface to avoid the net. It was good to see them again after all this time, if only for a moment. Come on spring!
Good job!
The arctic blast took longer to get here than they expected, but it is also much colder than expected. It was 9 F this morning, and they forecast it will drop, eventually getting to -6 F for Monday night. This thing will come with hard wind (at least in this area) with wind chills as low as -25 F for cryin' out loud!
Good luck Matt !!
Our temps are bouncing around (staying less than 40), but rarely get below freezing. I used to live in Michigan, so I know cold, and can say with certainty that I do NOT miss it.
No, I did not keep koi in MI, but I remember as a child going with my grandfather to visit his sister and being mesmerized by the massive goldfish in her pond. There are lots of artesian springs in that area, and she used a flow-through design that provided warmth during the brutal winters.
A few photos from 4-10-2021. The evening shade was not the best time to photograph ginrin koi, which about 2/3 of these 20 are. They are a bit small for nearly a year, ranging from 3.5" to 6.5", not counting the 2 tobi that I plan to re-home (not pictured).
They look great - nice job! Is that a Kohaku swimming in the pack?
Can you tell if the larger one at 12 facing left on the first picture is ginrin it's a stunner with or without the bling. Very nice results it was worth the wait, thanks
Thanks Sean! Well ... for now it's a kohaku. I'll watch as it grows to see if any bits of sumi show up, and hope it stays clean. I have only grown out a couple of kohaku and a couple of ginrin orange muji from showa spawns. One kohaku later developed a tiny but prominent area of sumi, and the other 3 did not.
These 12 have grown an average of 1.5" since mid-April and are now 5-8". I am surprised at some things:
- All 4 of the non-ginrin showa and both of the ginrin hi utsuri are bigger than all 6 of the ginrin showa.
- The two ginrin hi utsuri are by far the two thickest bodied of the 12.
- Each of the 4 non-ginrin showa have at least a few ginrin scales here and there.
A few more pics ...
Nice crop you have there
I pulled these up again last night to check development, and plan to post photos soon. One of the things I was curious about is their level of growth considering the feeding.
From April 10 to June 21 (72 days, ~2.4 months), I had been feeding them the high protein seafood paste in addition to their pellets. In that time, they grew an average of 1.5" each. That's not a lot for 2.4 months, but I guess it's not bad considering that the water temperatures in April and May were rather cool. [Also, I noted that all of the ginrin showa were smaller than all of the others.]
At that point, I stopped feeding them the seafood paste and went to just pellets. For one thing, I wanted to see if it made much difference in their growth. [I recall a few years ago, I moved some undersized one-year-olds to my main pond (12,000 gallons), and their growth exploded while only being fed pellets.]
So on August 5, I pulled them up again after 45 days, ~1.5 months. Granted, it's hard to say if this is a fair comparison since the water temperture has been much higher than the first test, the second test was only for about 60-65% of the time of the earlier test. In any case, the average increase was 1.5" each, the same as before. Maybe the warmer water and the shorter test time just cancelled each other out. Or maybe the food type had an impact, probably both to some degree. I plan to go back to supplementing their diet with some seafood paste, but not as much as when they were smaller.
Another interesting thing was that the growth was far from uniform. The ginrin showa group had only added 1", but the others had added 2" on average. So the gap in size between the ginrin showa and the others continued to widen. The ginrin showa are now 6" - 7.5", and the others are 9" - 10". That means the smallest of the others is 20% longer than the largest of the ginrin showa. I suspect this is more than a coincidence.