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  • Results 1 to 19 of 19

    Thread: 2020 Flock Spawn, a little of everything, start to finish

    1. #1
      goclassv's Avatar
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      2020 Flock Spawn, a little of everything, start to finish

      I was hoping to do a spawning thread this year, but the amount of work I put into my 30 or so keepers was so time consuming that posting online was not gonna happen.

      Towards the end of May my fish finally spawned. I had been asking on the site how I could get my fish to spawn earlier, as the previous two years the spawn happened in the second half of June giving me little time to grow the fish in upstate NY. This year I heated the water to almost 80 and after doing water changes every other day for a week, the fish finally spawned. I believe the females who participated were a doitsu ochiba, goshiki and a hi utsuri.

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      They hatched within 3 days. A few days after that I went through and selected both white and dark babies to be put in separate 110g tubs. I put 200-300 fry in each tub. In a larger 400-500 gallon pond, I left a mix of the yellow/white/black fry. The ratio of the colors was about 80% yellow, 15% white and 5% dark. I had heard the yellow ones would most likely become orange or yellow, which is what I found to be the case. If I was to do this again, I would probably discard all the yellow.

      My tubs/fry pond:
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      The fry colors:
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      My dark fry:
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      I feed them with baby brine shrimp for about a week before I started to mix in old tropical fish flake and within 2 weeks, they were solely on flake.

      To be continued.....
      Attached Images Attached Images  

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    2. #2
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    3. #3
      goclassv's Avatar
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      So I quickly learned a lesson.... 2-3 fry per gallon is ok for about 3-4 weeks. Unknown amount of fish in 400-500 gallons is not ok. The problem is I hatched my entire spawning rope in the larger container. To give you an idea of how many fish were possibly in there, here is a picture of a clump of spring algae with eggs I threw in a 20g aquarium after a week:

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      Based on my very limited experience counting these fry, that is well over 1000 fry. Considering how much spawning rope I had put in to hatch, I would expect that there were 10,000 fry in my pond at a minimum. Needless to say, I made the same mistake in this pond that I had in previous years... overstocking!

      Here is a picture on June 17th, fry just under 3 weeks old and already large growth differences apparent. At this point I recongnized the issue and attempted to cut the population by 2/3... of course the issue is I had no idea how many we’re actually in there, so who knows how many I actually got rid of.

      July 17th:
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      Now even after what I thought was a massive cull, my mistake became readily apparent two weeks following with the sightings of mega tobies...

      Mega tobie 1 of 20:
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      Luckily however, the mega tobies did quite a bit of thinning for me, and after removing them I was left with a more manageable amount of fish.

      Now going back to mid June, the fry in the dark tub were still dark and nothing much to see, but the ones in the white tub were developing patterns already at only 3 weeks:
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      At this point I did weed out some yellow fish I had originally thought were white, but I did not cull to any extent in my two 110g tubs.

      Now for the entire month of July, I would cull fish once a week. I would toss/give away a few hundred from the pond (mostly yellow/orange ones, or messy looking grey and pink ones) and also get rid of any fish that seemed either apparently ugly from the 110g tubs or were lagging far behind in growth.

      This next picture is from July 29th showing a batch of keepers from the pond:
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    4. #4
      goclassv's Avatar
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      Now August was when things finally became excited. I was tired of managing fish in 3 areas and after 2 months, the red began to show. Previously the only fish I could really recognize was was the hi utsuri... but now, the dark fish began to show their kohaku like patterns and about 1/3 of them turned out to be ochiba. In my white fry tub I found some Sanke, what I call dirty kohaku (wishful that they might be goshiki, but I don’t think so), Sanke, and goromo.

      My largest issue was my mix of scaled and scaleless koi. I ended up tossing some great patterns from some messy scaled fish. All in all, about half of my dark fry (which were likely all from my doitsu ochiba) we’re partially scaled, which I find very ugly. Oh well. In the end, probably only 10-15 of the original 200-300 fry made this cut from the dark tank, while the majority of other interesting fish came from my white fry tank.

      To make a long story short, I finally cut the entire population of my fish to less than 100. Here is a photo of a sample of the fish from August 14th:
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      All the remaining fish were moved to the pond to make my life easier. Interestingly my fish in my big pond must have sensed the empty tubs and spawned once again for me.... no thank you!

    5. #5
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      And lastly here are the photos I took last weekend. About 30 fish I believe. What was interesting was that I did not notice the metallics and yellows until September when they became readily apparent. Not even sure what some of these fish are called although I have seen them before. I can tell my ogon male definitely took part in the spawn!

      In the end I probably put in 100 hours or more sorting fish and doing maintenance. It was certainly a challenge, but this is the first year that I’m actually happy with my results. Next year I plan to take the year off!

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    6. #6
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      What food did you feed the fry? Would you cull any differently next year?

    7. #7
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      From start to finish it was Baby brine shrimp for the first couple weeks, flakes (Kensfish color max flakes) from week 2 until almost 2 months, around 6 weeks I started using small Cichlid pellets (I had an old box of foil packaged tetramin Cichlid color pellets that needed to be used up), and lastly at around 10-12 weeks I transitioned to purina Aquamax Pondfish 4000).

      I would say I was happy with the growth with around half of my fish meeting or exceeding 1 inch per month. On the growth side, I should have done more water changes in the beginning. This would have been difficult because I had 3 different vessels to change and because I would have needed to heat the water as each large water change really drops the temperature by often 5+ degrees. Regardless, I think that if I had done more water changes (and heated) I could have fed more.

      My biggest lesson learned on selection was to not hatch in the main grow out pond.... I need to control my numbers and the only accurate way to do that with such limited space is counting fry. I did much better on controlling fry this year than in previous years, but not good enough.

      Next lesson would be to eliminate almost all of the yellow fish. Only keep 100 fry the next time maybe.

      And last, eliminate the messy scales as soon as I see them. I believe I could already see them at 6-8 weeks on some fish... no point raising them as they look horrendous.

    8. #8
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      Great post. Thanks for sharing your experiences!! I really like your doitsu ochiba fry - very nice.

    9. #9
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      Quote Originally Posted by goclassv View Post
      ... eliminate the messy scales as soon as I see them. I believe I could already see them at 6-8 weeks on some fish... no point raising them as they look horrendous.
      Yeah, that's one drawback of spawns involving doitsu, and like you say, you can't really tell early on. But none-the-less, you got some good looking results. Thanks for sharing them and telling the story.

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      Good results.
      The one time I actually put forth effort to raise fry, when I culled to bring the numbers down, I just threw them in the big pond. My soragoi was like a shark going after the fry, was quite the site.

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      Man... That looks like A LOT of work. I wanted to try my hand at some very amateur breeding/culling in the future, but I should probably just go with "let nature deal with it".

      Great photos and documentation on your entire process. It was very informative!

    12. #12
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      Quote Originally Posted by Fishmover View Post
      Good results.
      The one time I actually put forth effort to raise fry, when I culled to bring the numbers down, I just threw them in the big pond. My soragoi was like a shark going after the fry, was quite the site.
      How big were the fry and the soragoi at that time?

    13. #13
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      Quote Originally Posted by Nguyen365 View Post
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      Konishi breeding project in 2021?

    14. #14
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      Quote Originally Posted by abuchi123 View Post
      Konishi breeding project in 2021?
      I dont know if the karashigoi will be ready by 2021 any thoughts?

    15. #15
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      Quote Originally Posted by Nguyen365 View Post
      I dont know if the karashigoi will be ready by 2021 any thoughts?
      If you have got both male and female, they will be ready.

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      Quote Originally Posted by Matt24 View Post
      How big were the fry and the soragoi at that time?
      It wasn't just the soragoi going after the fry, it was all the koi in my pond. At the time the soragoi was 18" rest of the koi were between 15" and 26"
      The fry were half an inch to an inch

    17. #17
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      Quote Originally Posted by Fishmover View Post
      It wasn't just the soragoi going after the fry, it was all the koi in my pond. At the time the soragoi was 18" rest of the koi were between 15" and 26"
      The fry were half an inch to an inch
      Thanks for that data point. Usually big koi don't bother little koi, but if the size differential is right, they will. I once put 12" koi in a tub with hundreds of very small fry, < 0.5". He ate all of them.

    18. #18
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      Quote Originally Posted by Nguyen365 View Post
      I dont know if the karashigoi will be ready by 2021 any thoughts?
      As big as your karashi are, no problem. If the feel right, they will go.

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      Orlando is offline Senior Member
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      Quote Originally Posted by Nguyen365 View Post
      I dont know if the karashigoi will be ready by 2021 any thoughts?
      To young in my opinion, could be dealing with lot's of deformities.

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