| spike, nice to see you posting here, been awhile
I quess over the time I've been involved in koi, I have heard all of the urban legends around. The last coupla decades rather than believe what I read or hear, I've been busy learning on my own. Different filter media, different food,different bloodlines, yes even jumbo tosai. So I quess what I'm about to say is from my own learning experience. I have a relatively small pond, so I run a meager amount of koi in my system to compensate. Those that I pushed the first three years of their life believing this was the time to capture maximum length without the sexual maturity concerns met my expectations. Those that I pushed in season and allowed to slow in winter
easily caught up with the others. I have had koi which were labeled as refusing to grow in friend's ponds, take off in mine for a season. Because of my high regard for toshio sakai, most of all my koi are matsunosuke bloodline.
I have friends who claim that fish raised elsewhere that were pushed appeared to have health issues later in life.Is it just their ponds? I don't know. Since buying 3 and 4 year old koi is out of the realm of my budget, my experiences have been with tosai.
My hunch is that there is a price to be paid for pushing the envelope. How many Sumo wrestlers live a long and health concern free life? The other side of the coin ( or for the samerai out there, the other edge of the sword) is that if I was a breeder who's livlihood
depended on getting their contestants up to task in 5 years to compete in the show of shows, I might look at this different ! For me I'm perfectly happy to provide the best of everything for my charges with the expectation that allowing them to live a long and happy life being the best they can be fits best with where I am in the hobby. |