Having just spent the last 3 days culling a sanke spawn (it would have gone into 4, if it were not for Mike Snaden joining me for the last few hours) I can appreciate the lengths the Japanese breeders go to in achieving such high quality sanke.
Out of a spawn the number of true sanke looking fry are so small.
I only pulled the seine net through the pond once, as when I saw the numbers, I knew if I pulled any more up I would never get through them! I see now why the growth rate has been so slow. I thought the pond contained around a hundred thousand, but with one pull through the pond I had more than 200,000 thousand for sure and I estimate I missed a third of them!
Most are only an 1” in length and hard to cull at that size. I used a 3 gallon bucket for the culls and filled it twice. After all that I ended up with 3,000 keepers and at least half of those will go on the next cull.
Below is a couple of tobies with the looks of sanke about them.
Maurice.
