| Great response, Dick. This post's going to be a jumble because I don't have much time to write and because I am just going to spill/brainstorm how I feel about this hobby as a whole, so here goes: the koi hobby as a whole does have limitations, contrary to what I used to believe when I first entered the hobby. Two of the many limitations that are on my mind right now are (1) a hobbyist with an average backyard pond of 8,000-20,000 gal, regardless of how often the hobbyist feeds or how pristine the water is or how sparsely stocked it is, will not be able to grow his/her koi to the maximum potential that Japanese breeders can with their grow-out Monterollite mud ponds in the same period of time, and (2) Japanese breeders will not depart with potential tosai because these tategoi are the ones that will put rice on their plates.
No disrespect to those in the hobby who buy nisai or sansai or older koi, but I really believe that the greatest reward is in raising a winner from when it is still a young tosai. While I still sway back and forth between purchasing tosai versus nisai or older koi, I would buy a tosai in a heartbeat if I knew that that tosai had potential and is one of the breeder's potential tategoi. I would then watch it develop under my care by giving it the optimal water condition, feeding schedule, and controlling all parameters so that I can give this koi the best environment/opportunity for it to fully blossom. This to me is the greatest achievement. However, the hobby doesn't work this way.....at least not to my knowledge and not yet anyways. Also, to my knowledge, the GC contenders are those koi that are going to grow big in a short number of years, and an average hobbyist cannot achieve this with tosai in their avg backyard pond.
Dick, you also brought up a good point about selecting tosai for several years down the road. However, these tosai are really rare to find, especially since most of the tosai are fed color-enhancers or their sumi or beni are finishing too quickly and the fact that most of them are males (I am starting to believe that ALL of them are males and that the breeders know that they are males). I, too, have been hunting for tosai for years down the road, but either because of the lack of experience or my luck, I have not found many.
Also, while it is easy to say that a hobbyist should keep his/her tosai for at least 3-5 years, I find it hard to do because I feel that my knowledge keeps on expanding, and with that, a need to find better koi to start over. Believe me, I am all for keeping koi for a long time to better understand its development, but when you only have a limited number of space in your pond and you want to continually upgrade your collection (human nature, perhaps?) I find it very hard to do.
Dick, in short, I am all for selecting and purchasing tosai. But as you can see, there clearly are limitations in doing so, especially when one aspires to have a GC koi/trophy some day. Anyways, just my thoughts/opinion. |