Kohaku Fry or Kigoi?

[jacovors]

Me and my fry again.
I notice most if not all my Kohaku fry are still orange in colour.No colour enhancing food is fed.
They will be two months old this comming week and most are between 10 and 12cm long now.I even noticed some with that looks like Kigoi with a darker red patern on them.The gin ones have the lightest beni an the body and I presume it is the gin reflecting most of the colour.
Where do Kigoi come from and are they a bi-product of Kohaku spawning?
Tomorrow I will do some culling again and will try and get some pics to demonstrate what I mean.
Thanks
Jaco. :?:

[dick benbow]

Sounds like your enjoying yourself! like most varieties initially kigoi came from asagi. today they come from kigoi to kigoi. I bred kigoi this year.
dad was akemae (red eyed) most of his babies are like mom but a few
are red eyed. will be going thru the last cull this coming saturday. don't get in a hurry with the kohaku babies. a lot of changing goes on for the next few months. a this stage I suggest you look for white noses and retain patterned koi. not to be too concerned about tail stops at this age.
save a few all red ones and cull the all white ones as they develop. work hard on keeping good water conditions and well fed with lots of room for growth.
if you make extensive notes now on patterns and quality you will be surprised at the final cull that you can't find those great patterned, perfect quality koi. they have a mind of thier own and change seems to be the way of life. concentrate on keeping them healthy and be patient. pics would be fun! I think with mine ( i'll know better this saturday) i've got half a dozen nice kohaku koi (patterned) and one is tancho. ( it has the deepest red of the bunch) one of my green chagoi babies from mid summer's spawning last year looks to be all of 8 inches and eats out of our hands. it was the last spawn we did with the biggest babies! wish i knew how to post pics. there are some matsukawabake tategoi, and some knock dead georgeous kumonryu. Dan Blatt who posts here quite often lives about an hrs drive away and could probably take some and post but I think he is scheduled with some family stuff. the girls that are going to be bred this year are due into the greenhouse to begin thawing out and to receive some nourishment to start producing eggs. this year in addition to our half a dozen proven pairs we will be trying showa and asagi for the first time. you can tell I'm beginning to get excited about the propect. after doing this for several years I get a hunch on certain combinations and both males of these new pairs are exceptional.

[MikeM]

Dick: Got any kigoi that look like they might be "sunkist" lemons? :lol:

[jacovors]

Here are the pics as promised.The first few shows what I kept which totaled to about 130.I recon we mised about 20 in the netting of the pond and to be safe we can asume there will be 250 fry left in the mudpond in total now.
I also removed all the male koi and added a few more female and in total 8 large koi also resides with the babies now.The pond holds 300 000 lietrs now and 450 000 when full so space is not a problem. I was aspecially happy about the condition of the larger koi which were in the mudpond for only two months, great growth from eating all the eggs and babies I presume.
One Shintaro Sanke started to develop Niigata gin on almost every scale on it's back and sides and is about 26 inches and 4 years old.I had to move the bigger koi first so no time to take pics there sorry.
As you can see from the groupshot before culling there were no tobi fry and I presume the parent koi spawned one more time.Or one female spawned later than the first bunch.
There were too many small koi of about 2 inches together with the larger fry of 4 inches.They were very uniform in these two sizes.
There were only about 2000 fry to cull and I presume most of the eggs and babies were eaten by the parents as I left them in the pond to reduce the total somewhat. As Dick said I will have to wait and see how my 'tatigoi' will turn out.
PS Dick you will have to learn how tp post pics ASAP.
Boasting without proof is easy :twisted:
Jaco.

[dick benbow]

mike M

Hi Bud! yes I have one lemon yellow one. she's my grandma of the pond,
her scales have fukerin, her belly is white white and the yellow is so deep.
never have seen another koi like her in all my years. the babies are all too young and are a light whitish yellow but that's what you want at this age. I have seen babies at this age that are already showing an orange color, and they grow too dark as they mature. as proof of this I wrote an article published in 2000 in koi usa featuring my akemae kigoi. for those of you that have that publication year look thru it and you find her picture.

jaco,
your right I would like to be able to prove my breeding abilities by showing some of my youngsters. I'll see what I can do. it was hard for my tired old eyes to pick up anything from your photos, but the body shape and uniformity looked good!

[MikeM]

Jaco: Nice pics. I think you'll have fun sifting through those over the next couple of months.

Dick: I think yellow has not been fully appreciated in koi. So often it runs to orange or ochre and has a dull tone. But, every now & then a truly lemon yellow shows up and is fantastic IMHO. I've egged on Brady about re-creating ki utsuri. The other variety that needs to be re-developed is the ki showa. Most were ochre or faded brick red and got culled out as showa was developed. But, some months back there was one listed on koiauction. It had all sorts of pattern problems etc., but the yellow was fairly good and was crisply demarcated from the shiro, with sumi running all over the place. Made for a very bright & cheerful look. While that one was not a great individual, it made me think that a ki showa could be a stunner. Anyway, it got me paying more attention to kigoi. I'm wanting to know more about the genetics of akame kigoi. The red eyes made me think they were albino types, but I was reading one of those old Japanese mags about albino koi used in some breeding experiments & the author emphasized that akame kigoi are not albino, but simply lacking in part of the melanin-based coloring, not all as in an albino. However, there was no further info on the subject. Seems akame are consistently a purer yellow, but I suspect that is due to being "semi-albino" ... muddy tones are still ready to come out in the genes. A pure yellow non-akame kigoi is a rare creature. ... I'm going to look up your photo.

[soelistyo]

is there a way to define in words the difference between kigoi and a fawn colored chagoi? i have one which i suspect is the latter, but no digital pics on hand. no red eyes. eats like there's no tomorrow and is about 80cm and 4 years old.
dealer called her a kigoi but i'm skeptical.

[dick benbow]

just a quess that a cha based koi would have a better chance of developing a black net pattern. I've never seen a kigoi with one.


dan blatt wrote me last night saying he would try and get down saturday
at the sorting of the babies to take pics, so we'll see.

[Sanke56]

Jaco you fry look good quite impressive considering the mix in the breeding. I have a question for the breeders etc if fry develop flared gills is that due to genetics or poor water conditons. Only one blood line is doing it and the female has produced several spawnings before with no sign of this until I used the male I used last year. I think it is likely a genetic defect in the male. But would like to hear the comments. You can't see it in the picture but I could try and take one

[jacovors]

Thanks for the replies guys.
Sanke56 I once heard fry with flared gills usually point to overstocking and incorrect feeding, I might be wrong.
Dick and Dan I look foreward to see how youre culling turned out.I always enjoy looking at pics of homebred koi.
and what they look like when it's done right.
Such an ugly word though....HOMEBRED. :!: