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    Thread: 2021 Hariwake, Beni Kikokuryu, Kujaku spawn

    1. #21
      Matt24's Avatar
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      Still small, but growing a little faster than some of my recent spawns. I think it is because of the warm weather. Despite the tub being mostly shaded, the water temp is staying mid-70's and above. Typically, I've gotten a spawn earlier and the weather is cooler. Since they are developing faster, I've just stopped feeding the yeast, and increased the seafood paste some. I've also gone to granuals of the ground up pellet powder. I am not using the super-fine powder anymore. This is a little larger, but still pretty small.

      Below is a pic from yesterday. So far, most look straight, but still a long way before the prescence of most deformities can be seen. Though for now, it seems spawns of koi 12-14 years old can work.

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    2. #22
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      Good progress, they are looking good

    3. #23
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      Where they had all looked pretty much yellow, I'm now starting to see a very small number of them that now have a black spot on their head, and an even smaller number that have black spots going down their back to the tail. I know from an old kujaku spawn that kujaku can do that. Around half of these should have a kujaku dad. I don't know if beni kikokuryu (the other dad) do that too or not. Also, many seem more grey to light brown than yellow. They are about 2 weeks old.

      I'm also seeing a very small number that are substantially larger than the vast majority. That's okay for now, but I will watch it close, so the tobi don't get out of control. With such large numbers, I would not mind larger ones eliminating lots of the smallest and weakest ones. I just have to get the tobi out before they start eating too many that are good prospects.

    4. #24
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      Good morning Matt, I don't know if you have noticed this in your spawn's but with my fry after the second month I don't seem to have a problem with Toby's, but I do separate mine around the six week mark.

    5. #25
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      Quote Originally Posted by Orlando View Post
      Good morning Matt, I don't know if you have noticed this in your spawn's but with my fry after the second month I don't seem to have a problem with Toby's, but I do separate mine around the six week mark.
      Yes, I don't see much problems with tobi after 2 months either. For one thing, I usually watch for tobi closely and remove them from the smaller fry from time to time. Also by two months, most of the fry are too big for the tobi to eat.

      Last year, I netted out a 3" orange tobi at 46 days.

      The year I bred soragoi & ochiba, I just let the tobi issue just run its course for a while, which was a bad move. At 8 weeks, I netted out a 5.5" tobi and another that was 4". No tellin' how many prospects I has lost because of them.

    6. #26
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      In 2019, the late Mark Gardner did a similar spawning of a Doitsu hariwake female and a beni kikokuryu male and posted videos of the progress and results. Some differences in that spawn and mine are that he used better quality, certainly shinier, oyagoi than the ones I have, though they were not nearly as large. Also, he did not include a second male, whereas I included a Doitsu kujaku male. Since the crossing was rather similar to mine, I was quite interested to review the videos he posted of the progress and results. He did other spawnings that year also, but below for anyone who may be interested, I have linked the selected videos that involve that pairing and their selections:

      Doitsu hariwake and beni kikokuryu introduced, last couple of minutes of this video (part 4) ...
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKtY...J3R06F&index=4

      5/18/2019 Doitsu hariwake and beni kikokuryu spawning (part 5) ...
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY1C...J3R06F&index=5

      6/28/2019 (~6 weeks) 1st selection from Doitsu hariwake and beni kikokuryu spawning (part 12)...
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvAp...3R06F&index=12

      7/16/2019 (~9 weeks) 2nd selection from Doitsu hariwake and beni kikokuryu spawning (part 16)...
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1Sn...3R06F&index=16

      8/5/2019 (~12 weeks) 3rd selection from Doitsu hariwake and beni kikokuryu spawning (part 17)...
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASVA...3R06F&index=17

      9/5/2019 (~3 1/2 months) 4th selection from Doitsu hariwake and beni kikokuryu spawning ...
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPN9...3R06F&index=20

      11/14/2019 (~6 months) Update of Doitsu hariwake and beni kikokuryu spawning from about the 10 min to 19 min marks ...
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRne...3R06F&index=21

      4/5/2020 (~10 1/2 months) Final selection of the 2019 koi from about the 5 min to 20 min marks .... By this time, Mark has put the koi from the different spawns together, so many of the koi are from his other spawns of beni kikokuryu, not from the Doitsu hariwake and beni kikokuryu crossing.
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIkF...3R06F&index=22

    7. #27
      Matt24's Avatar
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      Well it has been an eventful week

      First I should point out that over the last 3 weeks or so, I had been noticing quite a few fry that had little control over their swimming, alive but ruined. Many would be tilted sideways at 45 degrees. Yet they were not dying. They still had energy and react to try to avoid a net, just with very little control over direction. A few days ago, I netted up a couple of samples and counted. About 40-50% of the fry were affected! I don't know the cause ... A parasite? I don't see any in the microscope. Fry sucked through the pump? Since so few are dead, and the disability seems so uniform, and since this hasn't happened in either of the last two years with the same setup, I don't think that's it. I've also heard the theory that older females have tougher egg shells and some fry are harmed in the process of hatching. Whatever it is, I hope it doesn't spread.

      About this time I noticed the number of tobi was increasing substantially. And with the number of fry being huge, far more than I could envision going through, I got to thinking and hoping that if I let the tobi do their thing for a while, maybe they would catch mostly the bad swimmers and those that are otherwise weak and slow. That seemed like too much to hope for, but I tried it and now after about 5 days, it seems to be working to a large degree. The number of tobi have exploded. And now when I dip up the small ones and count, those with the bad swimming problem now number 10-15% instead of 40-50%. Meanwhile, over these 5 days, I have been netting lots of small fry and moving those that can swim well and have no obvious deformity to a floating container, for protection from the tobi. Which brings me to the next big problem.

      I have one setup that is a plastic clothes basket that I lined with mosquito netting. I float it in the tub and use it to separate fry by size, and have used it several times over the years. This year when I went to get it out of storage, I noticed that the netting had quite a few holes that fry, maybe even big ones, could get through. So I decided on another plan, I found a plastic Rubbermaid storage container that is about 6 gallons and designed to be stored under a bed. My wife had gotten it a few years ago from her mother. I drilled lots of small holes in each end to allow at least some flow through, and started putting in a few dozen fry one afternoon. The next morning, I noticed a few dead fry in the container. My first thought was that the netting and selection may have been more rough on them than I expected. But then I checked late that afternoon, there were lots of dead fry. I'd say roughly 2/3 in that container had died within 24 hours, while the thousands outside the container looked the same as before, with very few deaths. Ammonia and nitrite readings in the container were fine. I sort of suspect there must have been something stored in that container in the past that might have been toxic. But who knows? I got that container out, mended the old mosquito net as best I could, and put the clothes basket in the pond. Then I moved a lot the small fry to the basket, removing many bad swimmers in the process. So a lot has gone wrong to knock down the fry count, but there are still a lot of fry left. If the bad swimming problem isn't contagious, there is still hope for good results, but time will tell.

    8. #28
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      It's definitely some mystery, but the symptoms showed themselves after some time could it be possible for the Doitsu X Doitsu factor expressing it self in a different way. The only thing that make's think that, are your first percentages 40% to 50% but it's definitely mind boggling. The ones in the basket that died rather quickly could have been low O2 I've seen large die off's happen smaller koi imo seem to be more susceptible to low O2 situations I hope thing's work out i know the amount of time and effort that goes into this.

    9. #29
      Matt24's Avatar
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      Quote Originally Posted by Orlando View Post
      It's definitely some mystery, but the symptoms showed themselves after some time could it be possible for the Doitsu X Doitsu factor expressing it self in a different way. The only thing that make's think that, are your first percentages 40% to 50% but it's definitely mind boggling. The ones in the basket that died rather quickly could have been low O2 I've seen large die off's happen smaller koi imo seem to be more susceptible to low O2 situations I hope thing's work out i know the amount of time and effort that goes into this.
      I have not heard of the NN gene pair injuring or killing fry when they are a few weeks old. Have you ever heard of that? I was only aware of NN death at hatching. Right after they hatched, I saw lots of dead fry among the remains of the eggs, like I saw in 2012, the last time I spawned Doitsu X Doitsu. I haven't seen that with my other spawns. In this case, the percentage of the bad swimmers was as high as 40-50%, which is well above the 25% odds of a Doitsu X Doitsu fry getting the NN gene pair.

      As for your idea of low oxygen in the small tub, I can't think of anything more likely. The ones in the clothes basket with much greater water exchange seem to be doing much better. I had thought that given how small the fry were, the oxygen would be plenty for 24 hours. Perhaps not.

    10. #30
      Orlando is offline Senior Member
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      It was just a question from my part concerning the Doitsu X Doitsu cross, but now you have a question to answer by making the same cross next spawning season to see if the event's repeat and if it happens you have some important information.

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    11. #31
      Matt24's Avatar
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      That is indeed a curiosity that I'd like to have more data on. I don't know if I would try this same group next year or not. It depends on how this season goes and other factors. History may provide a little insight.

      I bred these same 3 Doitsu koi 9 years ago. Of course since they were much younger then, the hard egg shell factor would not have been in play. There were also two other Doitsu males in that spawning group (4 males). When the fry from that spawn were growing up, I did not see the many bad swimmers of the type that I have seen this year. But there were a lot with crooked tails. I have not seen nearly so many crooked tails in any spawn since then, including this year.

      Some may be thinking, "Isn't 4 males with one female a bit much?". Yes, that was a mistake. I had 3 males with this female hariwake, but they would not spawn. After several days, I decided to try adding another Doitsu female, but I mistook the robustly built beni kikokuryu for a female. Nonetheless, it worked out the next morning anyway, as HE turned out to be much more aggressive than the other males and got her going. Whatever works, I guess.
      Last edited by Matt24; 07-05-2021 at 12:19 AM.

    12. #32
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      At 5 weeks old, the tobi have eaten all of the bad swimmers I think, and I've been removing fry with deformities. There are a substantial number with crooked tails and/or deformed gills, but there seem to be plenty that don't show deformity so far at this size. Spot checking some of the larger ones, I'm seeing all sorts of scale types, leather, linear, fully scaled, etc.

      With the fry being big enough that I don't think I have to worry about them getting sucked into the pump, I replaced the 300 GPH pump with the 500 GPH pump.

      After I moved the smaller fry to the plastic clothes basket lined with mosquito netting, the fry deaths dropped a lot, but there were still too many. Then I attached a small powerhead to the side of the basket that pumps a very small fountain of water into the top of the basket to provide extra aeration. Then the fry deaths dropped greatly.

      In this photo, you can see the big difference in size between the twerps in the basket and the bigger ones outside. The largest I've netted so far was 1.75", but most are under 1".

      The little ones like to hang out just below the surface. So I've started crumbling goldfish flakes that are 42% protein and sprinkling them on the surface so they float. Maybe the little ones will be more likely to get those and grow.
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    13. #33
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      Quote Originally Posted by Matt24 View Post
      ... home-made frozen seafood mix that I call "Wombat paste" after an Aussie breeder that used to post here and shared his recipe, which was similar. I take canned seafood like salmon, tuna, sardines, mackerel, etc and blend about 75-80% seafood with 20-25% soft canned veggies like English peas, pumpkin, or Veg-All. I freeze it in plastic bags, and then break one up with a hammer as needed ...
      I've been sprinkling this in for a while now, but yesterday, I hung out the frisbee and put a chunk on it. It took quite a while, but then they found it and eventually figured out it was food. It also makes for a good place to observe them. The small chunk to the side is the food. The big chunk in the middle is a rock to keep the frisbee from floating.

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    14. #34
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      Thatīs quite an observation spot !

    15. #35
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      Great job Matt! You've gotten some excellent growth as well. I really look forward to seeing how this one plays out. I also really appreciate the great information that you compile in each thread.

      Cheers

    16. #36
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      Quote Originally Posted by spkennyva View Post
      Great job Matt! You've gotten some excellent growth as well. I really look forward to seeing how this one plays out. I also really appreciate the great information that you compile in each thread.

      Cheers
      Thanks Sean. I was comparing what I am seeing to what Mark Gardner's videos showed in his first two selections, and noticed that he had a lot more (about half) that looked very dark, more than mine do. That may be partly because I used a kujaku male and also because the "dark" part of my Beni kikokuryu is more of a silvery-gray than black. At 6 weeks his mostly looked like solid colors, some of which broke up into patterns later.

      This is one of my largest (2.25"), which is seems to be beginning to show some pattern formation, ahead of the smaller ones. I hope this is a preview of some pattern formation that many of the smaller ones will show later. You may have to turn up your screen brightness to see this photo well.

      I've noticed quite a few with deformed gills that either curve inward, making a bulge, or flare out. Notice the left gill on the smaller one in the photo. There are many more that are more obvious. There are also many with crooked tails. I've heard some say that gill deformity is caused by either genetics or by ammonia. However, I doubt those theories because I think I've seen some with gill deformities and some without deformity in every spawn, whether ammonia has been problematic or not.

      I've got a lot of size variation, including some tiny ones in the clothes basket that seem to be making very little progress.

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    17. #37
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      A couple of days ago, I used a regular koi net to pull up over 100 of the larger to medium sized ones that are too big to slip through the holes. After removing deformities, I noticed another one, a ki hariwake had jumped, I suppose, into the clothes basket with the tiny fry. Turns out it was a prettier prospect than any of the others I had just looked at. I should have taken a photo, but it was getting late and time for supper.

      The next day, I finally decided not much growth or development was happening with the tiny ones in the clothes basket. It seems most of those tiny ones were tiny for a reason, as almost all seemed to have something wrong with them, crooked tails or bodies or bad gills. I wound up moving about ten to the main body of the tub and got the basket out of there.

      But before I removed the basket, I saw one more (below) in the bottom that wasn't supposed to be in there. I don't know if it jumped in or found a whole in the mosquito netting. [This one is not missing a pectoral. It was just folded when this photo was taken.]

      Maybe instead of selection, I should just put the floating basket back and keep whatever jumps in!

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    18. #38
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      Matt, that's some good work your putting in with this batch and I like as far as development at this point, most people have never seen a koi in this stage and that makes folks understand why they are somewhat reluctant to comment and that's perfectly ok, that's why we do this. Folks have you ever seen a piece from any koi farm's showing images like this, there are a few culling videos out there but none with images like this. Good work has to be recognized so pay close attention, thanks for posting Matt.
      Last edited by Orlando; 07-22-2021 at 10:48 AM.

    19. #39
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      Thanks much Orlando. Just hoping however it turns out, folks (including me) can learn some things, if not what to do, what not to do.

      It's a little early still, but I have some observations about scalation. A few weeks back, I commented ...

      Quote Originally Posted by Matt24 View Post
      ... These same 3 were in another spawn 9 years ago, along with two other doitsu males. ... That spawn produced all scale types (leather, linear, fully scaled, and scattered). So I think her scale genetics are SsNn. She has a partial row of lateral line scales. The two males are leather, no scales on the sides, though the kujaku has a row of scales going down the belly.

      Time will tell, but similar to last time, I would expect all scaled types. Since she is SsNn and the males are ssNn, I expect 1/4 of the fry to die during hatching, as NN fry do. From the survivors, I would expect 1/3 leather (no side scales), 1/3 linear (lateral line scales), 1/6 fully scaled, and 1/6 scattered scaled.
      As expected, I am seeing some that are leather, linear, and fully scaled. I don't know why, but to my surprise, I have not noticed any yet that have scattered scales (not that i wanted any). I have seen some with a partial row of linear scales like the mother, and some with only a couple of scales along the lateral line, but not ones that had randomly scattered scales. Checking my records from 2012, I had written, "Most are Doitsu, with many linear scaled and many leather. There are also a significant number of fully scaled fry, and there were some with scattered scales."

      Some of the koi have a full row of lateral line scales. So even though the mother just has a partial row, she must carry the genes necessary for a full row.

    20. #40
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      I like your technique - I may try that next season.

      Very nice looking fish. Hope it continues to develop into something great!!

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