[ppp]

I stay in Malaysia where the water temperature is 26-28C practically all year round. Although I'm a relative newbie, I've been on an extremely sharp learning curve for the past 18mths.

Currently I have 20 koi, averaging 65cm, in my 100 tonne pond. I've read that koi should not be fed beyond X% of their body weight, X varying depending on the size of the fish. This has not really helped me as I have never weighed any of my koi and I don't weigh the food (Saki Hikari) either.

With the guidance of my dealer here, I settled on 20 handfuls of food a day. This total amount is then divided by the number of times I am available to feed them for that day, this number typically varying between 5 and 8 times.

My koi have grown exceedingly well with this feeding routine, although my dealer has at times wondered whether I was over-feeding them.

Today Fujio Oomo was in town and I asked him, through my dealer, what the optimum amount of feed was for 20 koi of average length 65cm. After some simple calculations, Fujio's answer was 1.5kg. Since I had no idea how many handfuls of food this translated to, I took out my kitchen scale, put 20 handfuls of my Saki Hikari food into a plastic bag and weighed it. It weighed only 0.5kg!!

Now I'm thoroughly confused. I asked my dealer to double check with Fujio again and Fujio insisted that it was correct, according to how much Japanese breeders feed their koi.

1.5kg translates to 60 handfuls of food. In other words, the optimum level of feed is 3 handfuls per koi per day, assuming 65cm koi. Does this sound right to you guys? It does sound kind of excessive to me and I wouldn't want my koi to get hit with the many kinds of internal problems normally associated with over-feeding.

Please help.