Matt's 2024 Kohaku Spawn

[Orlando]

Fool me once it's, well you know that there are hiding areas in that tank I think there's a little homework to be done

[Matt24]

Just trying to learn a little about kohaku selection, as it is a new variety for me to be raising. I found this 5-6 minute video showing a first selection at Maduro Koi Farm and will probably look for others. They have the full transcript written out as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw9Q7tp7BgM

Summary of key points that stood out to me:

• First selection at 3-4 cm at about 4 weeks. [Most of mine probably won't be that big at 4 weeks at these temperatures. So I may just wait until they are. Also, mine tend to grow at different speeds, and I usually like to select a little at a time rather than going through them all in one sitting. So I'll improvise some, but still target the 3-4 cm size.]
• The build of the body is not the most important at this size. Just no deformities. Pattern or potential for pattern is most important. All white or all orange koi are not selected. If in doubt, let it grow a few more weeks. [These seem like reasonable traits that I will likely follow.]
• Don't select any with orange on entire head or orange in fins. [I may not necessarily follow these tips the first time with kohaku. I have at times seen a beautiful kohaku with a little red in a fin or a totally red head.]

I'd like to know your tips / comments if you have raised kohaku.

Here is another first selection video. Not all of his videos are in English, but this one is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQOWhEhw52o
I goes without saying, but this guy definitely would not have wanted me to have done the selection for him! He would have got a very different group.

Here is another brief video that only shows the ones selected in the first round.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aj5ykjHhr-k

[Orlando]

Nice examples for culling and first selections get easier as one repeats the spawning with same varieties and/or same Oyagoi parents

[Matt24]

I usually start this when the fry are younger, like 3 weeks. But I am finally getting to supplementing their diet with higher protein, blending up some Wombat paste to freeze (credit to the breeder/member who suggested the idea below) https://www.koiphen.com/forums/showt...For-2013/page2 post #37. My conceptually similar version of it today was like what I usually include: 30 oz salmon, 30 oz mackerel, 24 oz tuna, 15 oz English sweet peas, 15 oz pumpkin (114 oz total).

G'day Bindi and Koigrl,
Thank's for your interest.The ? Goshike spawn is growing very fast, many are now over 55cm.Each day they seem to change and appear more confusing to what I exected from this spawn. The daphnia are now long gone and the fry are fully adapted to the powders and past. Not home long enough each day to keep it up to them. The principle ingrediants in the paste vary according to availability. I do a lot of fishing and end up with a variety of left over's like fish frames, small bait species ( pilchards and mackrel mainly) and occasionally squid and prawns if I catch a surplus. I also get a lot of prawn head's (because I eat a lot of prawns). All this stuff is put through a mincer. To this I add wheat germ, oat bran,semalina and thank's to Wayne clay which I grind in a caffee grinder into dust. I also grind koi pellet's in the same caffee grinder and add it to the mix. From hear it get's tricky I have to wait until I am home alone ( if my wife finds out I am dead). All the above ingredients plus a big lump of Vegemite ( this is a descusting food product that only Australians can eat) is put through the food processor with added liquid to make a thick puree. I then put this into plastic bags and roll it out flat to about 1cm thick then freeze and can then be broken up easily into peaces for serving. Note it is very important to clean the food processor extremely well to remove all evidence of this process to maintain marital harmony. Really I think you can use anything you think is nutritious the important thing is make it a size the fish can eat.
Cheers

[Matt24]

I've been hearing that it is best to let kohaku fry get above 3 cm to see if the beginnings of a pattern are forming before doing a selection. So I did a size check. The little floating sticks are cut to 3 cm to more easily see about how many have reached that mark. The first two pictures are from the main group, where I did a dip with the adult koi net and let most of the smallest ones swim out through the holes before putting the rest in the black dish pan.



The second two pictures are from those that I separated due to larger size a few weeks ago to prevent tobi damage.



Not many are 3 cm, even in the group of larger ones. I can see the beginnings of patterns on many of them. So I feel like I could set the bar pretty low and do a first selection now, but I decided it would be better to wait a little while longer ... patience, patience ....

[spkennyva]

Matt, these are progressing nicely - good growth.

Regarding selections, due to my inexperience and current capacity, I have a tendency to hold more fry than I probably should, particularly if it’s a new paring, or an unusual pairing. However, if I had 10,000+ fry and food was costing $50/per week, I might be more motivated to cull earlier. For better or worse, I typically cull for deformities and size early on, wait until I'm totally confident that there's no magical transformation about to occur

[Matt24]

Thanks Sean. Since I'm in no rush and am not very experienced with raising kohaku fry or seeing the magic thereof, I'll try to take it slow.

[Matt24]

I've never been a big fan of tanchos, but I have a lot of these kohaku fry that look like these, with a light yellow spot on the head. Typically these spots are substantially less orange than the patterns on the fry that have larger plates of color on the bodies. So please nevermind the body shapes etc, but I'd like to get opinions on the color development of fry like these. Do they have potential to be tanchos or is that not the way tanchos develop?

[Orlando]

I've never been a big fan of tanchos, but I have a lot of these kohaku fry that look like these, with a light yellow spot on the head. Typically these spots are substantially less orange than the patterns on the fry that have larger plates of color on the bodies. So please nevermind the body shapes etc, but I'd like to get opinions on the color development of fry like these. Do they have potential to be tanchos or is that not the way tanchos develop?

Matt the skin is looking very good on these young one's it's too early to be able to appreciate the shiroji but sorry to say none of those are tancho,

[Matt24]

Matt the skin is looking very good on these young one's it's too early to be able to appreciate the shiroji but sorry to say none of those are tancho,

Thanks Orlando. What is it about them that makes them not tancho?

In my inexperienced mind, since the hi on the head of a kohaku (non-tancho) is normally as red or usually more-so than the red on the rest of the body, I would expect the color on a tancho's head to be at least as red or orange as the color on the bodies of the kohaku (non-tancho). But for these, the color on the head is less orange. I would expect the head spot to be a orange or redish orange at this stage, not this yellowish color. Is that the reason that you say these are not tancho? Or are you keying on something else?

Would you expect these to just fade out and become muji?

[Orlando]

The orange pigment is very light throughout some of those but I believe your question about these being muji will be a factor in their future all post a picture of a young tancho and one can see the difference. as you can see the red is there and it's not translucent.

[spkennyva]

Hi Matt,

These are progressing nicely! Regarding Tancho or not…, I really don’t have enough experience with them to say for sure, but I have a tendency to say that they will not be Tancho. My reason is that the marks on the head look more like something that appears on young Asagi, Goshiki, and others.

What follows is total conjecture…

In my attempts, I’ve found two types of Tancho marks, one that seems to start off more like a upper layer, “surface” skin color, and another that seems to slowly progress from deeper within the tissue. The former seems less stable and can often “vaporize”, and you’re left with a white koi. The later seems much more resilient and continues to develop and improve for several years. The above is based upon only a few samples, so it could be totally off. The ones in your picture do appear “deeper” type, but again, my guess is: not Tancho.

[Matt24]

Thanks Orlando and Sean for your comments on those "tancho wanabes".

Over the summer I've done a few partial selections in which I would dip up several dozen from the larger population and just keep the ones that were not muji and did not have any obvious deformity or really bad pattern. Yesterday was the first time I went through them all (except any small ones that may have hidden in the pump basket) greatly reducing the number. I still have a few others besides the ones in the photos below, but surprisingly these are the only dozen or so remaining that I thought had much hint of an interesting pattern.

Though I've raised several spawns, this has been a good first year learning experience with kohaku. Since the oyagoi were young and from the same farm in the same year, thus perhaps related, the match-up was less than ideal. But my only other known female kohaku was even smaller, and for safety, I did not want to put my big males with either of them. Hopefully, with a little experience, larger oyagoi, and a better match-up, a future spawn will have better results. For now, I'll just keep watching and learning with these.

[Orlando]

Matt the skin on those young one's is superb just be patient with them and give them time to develop I saw some interesting patterns. I harvested tank no# 1 today and only kept 17 out of about 75 them 17 went into that tank/pool I purchased 3 weeks ago.

[Matt24]

Here are the rest that have at least a hint of a pattern. Not as good for prospects, but I'll keep watching them for a while. I forgot to mention when I posted the better group, but most of these are around 2" - 2.5", with just a few over 3".

[Matt24]

I went through these 2" to 4.5" ones last weekend. I'm hoping to learn what I can from these, especially on color development.

• Whether red will develop from the orange, and if so, on all or on some
• How the color may develop on the males compared to the females
• Whether the few that are about 90% or more covered in orange will become red

On that last point, I gather that there seems to be a genetic link between the red white pattern and the depth of the red color, such that the ones that are completely covered in orange may become reddish-orange, but not really red. So I have never seen a truly red solid colored koi. But I want to see if just a little bit of white is enough to allow red to develop.

[Orlando]

I've tagged 2 koi, this is just my opinion. The one tagged infront of his face will stay orange the one tagged on it's right side will turn red. From what I've seen here with my fish those 2 tones of beni always appear and based on what I have seen that's how those tones develop I guess in about another 4 to 5 months we will see if what I've seen here repeats with your kohaku
By the way my 2 favorite ones are in the picture top right smaller on an tancho top left
After thinking about these 2 selections you need to remember that my 2 selections spread throughout the entire batch of koi not just the 2 I identified for the illustration

[Matt24]

How long does a cheap, thin, plastic trash can work as a filter? In this case, nine years, if I recall.

Due to risk of the tub having freeze-up issues in winter, I figured in December or January, I would need to shut down the tub and move the little kohaku to the little pond with the 1.5 year olds. But a couple of weeks ago, this happened. So I made the move early.

[Orlando]

From the angle it seems like the failure occurred at the seam but 9 year's of service I would call that a successful run it deserves to be repaired

[Matt24]

Whether for safety or just stress relief, I put in a "koi garage" to give the 2"-4.5" kohaku some cover from the 1.5 year old metallics, some of which are up to 12"-14". To keep this upside down dishpan from floating, I zip-tied rocks to it. Instead of holes that a fish might get stuck in, I cut slots in the sides that small koi can swim underneath. But it turned out that the little ones did not seem too bothered by the big ones. They calmly school around the sides and the larger ones ignore them. I have not seen them using the koi garage. In fact the 3 runt metallics that don't average much bigger than the kohaku loosened up, affected by the group confidence of the kohaku. Instead of hanging out around the pump, they tend to school around with the kohaku. Previously, I've used a similar but larger "koi garage" when introducing one-year-olds to my main pond. They tend to use it for the first few days/weeks after being added in with the adults.