| Koi fry take about three days to develop in the egg and hatch. It is critical to keep the water stable in temperature so it does not chill. A flap of plastic over the top of a show tank where they were spawned helps
as does a few aquarium heaters if the weatherman says the temps are expected to fall.
Within a day or two with both showa and shiros, you will see different colored fry. hopefully the majority will be black with the rest yellow or white or both. you discard the yellow or white fry and retain only black.
this is a tremendous advantage as you can keep your numbers down quickly for water quality considerations and also you are now feeding daphne or brine shrimp as live foods are SO IMPOTANT to thier growth
the first month of thier life.
Now you keep an eye open for the bigger fry that grow the quickest
and keep youngsters together of similar size so they don't eat thier siblings. As the color develops you'll be able to see patterns but depending on thier inherited genes, black will come up and down, or stay submerged under the skin. when the red comes up it's yellow, then goes to more of an orange as the months pass by.
Sunny, just for you here's a trick I learned with tosai showa. Many times as 6 inch koi you will see heavy black in the body area near the tail.
the stepped kohaku pattern is there along the rest of the koi so you are thinking of discarding this koi because the black is too dominant in the tail section. HOLD UP THERE PARTNER! look carefully under the black for any signs of red in the tail stop area. I usually take the youngsters outside in the sun for full light. many times the next spring or early summer the black crawls off the back to reveal a nicely finished koi with red in tail stop area that formerly was covered. for othert lurkers who buy tosai showa to raise remember this as you won't have to pay for pattern
that doesn't show. this is a fascinating hobby of ours, no wonder can
enjoy it soo much ( or the other end of the spectrum when things go bad) |