[ranskye]

good letter steve, much useful information.
and a man with a DO meter..go go steve.
i knew a guy with perch in a pond and one had 0 reading the other 0 and the one that had zero and an earator survived while the other died out.
seems they were trailing in the wake of the aerator and handled it.

i see what you mean by being cramped for space and having to go to the extra effort in providing feeding.
i understand your bongo pump thingy, i have heard of a way to produce god densities of rotifers through a tank with constant feeding of algae, yours is much the same and rather clever. they use a dose peristaltic pump to administer algae i think in the form of alga tablets. they use a drum filter to harvest the rotifers out and leave some in to continue the cycle, once again expensive to keep an eye on and to feed with the purchased alga tablets.
thoguh in a small tank i think primary nutrients are lacking and the boosting is neccessary and a bugger.. nothing like a pond full of calcium and micronutrients and all the other goodies that nature provides. seleniums and silicons.. the periodic table holds more than a bottle of fertiliser does..like a glass of water only has what you put in so so does any intensive produced food sources..
apart from hatching brine shrimp as a first feed, i have only ever created a bloom in a pond and used that as a holding rearing pond and yes the food runs out somedeay but with koi they wean easy as compared to our native fresh and marines.. ive seen em picking at food particles at about 3 days old but yes id rather them eat live stuuf anyday whilst young.
i saw once that gill problem in goldfish and thought it was a lack of oxygen or crowding at the time but yes this couldve been lack of oxygen=crash=lack of good nutrition for sure. feeders.

i read about some chinese guy working on rotifers and the like, (yes i have copepods too, geez theyre really supplying the goods now arent they!.)
he was into running highly fertilised algae ponds then pumping (i can drain due to my topography) the green water to his rotifer ponds then harvesting them and feeding to another pond with fry to fingerlings.
seems your trip is the same on a small scale but continuous.
i like this idea as the fish arent living in the high fertiliser and swinging parameter water,that the algae can tolerate. it was found that rotifers can tolerate really high levels and it hindered other unwanted zooplanktons. im thinking i can set it up almost automatic like your system.
in that i cna harvest rotifers and copepods with the use of fine mesh circle nets and automatic gate valves that open up with a 12v battery to drain away to pond once trapped.

i have checked out the inve and other things and yes those shrimp diets seem good in that they dont break down easy, the micro diets would be good though costly.

so for me its to trying the three stage idea. with just hatching them and releasing them. dropping the algae to rotifer copepods then after that supplementing them commercial ground pellet feed.

i know most hate the idea of a high protien diet for koi!
yes they dont have teeth. they dont have a predator gut but one that absorbs carbs and other organic plant type matter and that but while young they are predator feeders eating protien rich zooplanktons..

do you know of a way how to get a better hatch out, like what do you guys use apart from malachite?? salt? ive heard that if you use salt at 3 ppt the eggs begin to lose theyre stick and i can bubble them up in a hatching tank as i do now with other fish.
any ideas on the best easiest way? even when i have clean water thats 20 degrees i get a great number that fungus, is this cause theyre not viable to begin with or fungus attacking a viable egg? would you use UV if this be the case or salt?

ok must go check on my koi that got stuck in the egg netting. must change that too.
thanks again for feedback.