|
although there is fundamental truth to the almost urban legend at this point, that hard water brings out sumi, this has been given way too much blame/credit over the years.
It is as much about placing a fish that has been raised in a mud pond into a closed system ( especially in concrete or in liners with high nitrates) that is responsible for rapid finish. And that is what you see when you see showa getting black or shiro utsuri becoming more defined. Put another way, hard water does not make fish have MORE sumi. That is a function of genetics. It makes a fish express it's genetics more rapidly when compared to a mub pond setting.
I imagine that you see shimmies on kohaku due to two factors:
1) genetics ( 75% of the results we see are down to good genetics and bad genetics
2) change of water parameters- crowding leading high nitrogenous waste species, pH, water minerals/hardness ( 25%)
When fish 'finish', there skin is actually aging or maturing. Some fish finish rapidly due to genetics. Others age prematurely due to environment. And within premature aging are 'tricks of the trade'. Just as you can force a fish to grow faster than normal, you can cause a fish to finish faster than normal. You may want to do that on purpose or you might want to try and hold that off, depending on the genetic potential of an individual fish.
JR
|