salt levels in Japan farms

[Fishbreeder]

First, all koi, even Arkansas bekkos, have Japanese ancestors. The Japanese invented koi. We didn;t get Arkansas bekkos, Texas tanchos, and Carolina mulattos by selective breeding of wild carp caught in America. Heck, even the wild carps are mostly of Japanese ancestry, having been brought to the US for the first time around the late 1850's (after Admiral Perry's visit to Japan in 1854). They came from breeding the few specimens that made it across the waters.

So, anybody working on koi "before Japanese imports" were doing so in Japan, not in the US.

I'll give you that the increase in imports from Japan, as well as the rest of Asia, Africa, and elsewhere, has spread pathogens around the globe and into the US to a greater and greater degree.

As to "salt in all ponds in Japan". Unless something has majorly changed in the last couple of years, I had water from Japanese mud ponds, Japanese holding facilities, and Japanese water wells and springs broguth to the US and thoroughly tested. No hihg levels of salt in any of them. Some chloride (part of "salt") was in all the waters. As in Mississippi, if there are no chlorides in the water, the Japanese add salt to the pond, in relatively small quantities, here's why...

Lets say a "medium" sized Japanese mud pond of one surface acre, maybe 18 feet deep. Holds about 6 million gallons. To get salt up to what yall call "0.6%" (BTW, a stupid way to measure salinity, everybody else in the world uses "ppt" or parts per thousand to discuss salinity) will take about 350 thousand pounds (about 16,000 kilograms) of salt. Even with expensive koi, this is prohibitively expensive and logistically almost impossible.

Typically ponds in Japan (and in the US) that are naturally low in chloride will add enough salt to bring the salinity up to around 10 parts per million (about 0.001 ppt) or way less than 0.01%. This takes about 500 pounds of salt or so, not a problem to dump ten bags of salt into a pond. However, most of the time salt is delivered by a spreader truck that does all the ponds at one time.

Not all ponds in Japan or elsewhere are alwys so fresh. Along the coast brackish water is used to raise fish. Koi can do fine in water that is about 1/3 seawater (10 ppt or about 1.2%). They must get used to it slowly, and they become susceptible to saltwater parasites, ever see a koi with amylodinium? I have. These ponds are the exception and not the rule.

Where do yall come up with this stuff????

Brett

[dick benbow]

Hi Brett,
Good to see your post! It means your away from the backbreaking work and sitting comfortably in front of your PC!
That's the beauty of this forum, you never know what they'll come up with next.
Did you ever see the water breakdown in NI of all the famous breeders and hobbyists in japan? Was pretty interesting for comparison purposes.

[Fishbreeder]

I remember seeing that, not the data involved.

All my samples came from around Niigata and the water was mostly what we would call "soft". Hence the widespread use of oyster shells, egg shells and hydrated lime in the area.

Backbreaking work still going on, just too darn hot to be outside all day. When it gets like this, I look for excuses to stay in front of this box!

Dummy I am, though, I should be outside now and inside about 3 this afternoon. Got my workers at the farm this morning feeding the fish and such. In the summer, if the females aren;t fed by 8 am, they ain;t comin' up to eat. They stay below the thermocline in the summer, in 80 to 85 degree water. By noon, the water on the surface approaches 100 degrees. Measured a water temp last summer of 97! That was about 6 inches deep. Three feet below that the water was about 84. Much more comfortable for the koi closer to the bottom in such cases.

The males, two year olds, and young of the year don;t care how hot it gets, they stay hungry and ready to eat. However, its bad for them to come into the hot water then go right back into the cooler water in the afternoons. Hence feeding early before the water heats up and stratifies.

My chore for this morning...get some kind of tool that can be used to extract whatever it is in the Kubota's fuel tank that keeps stopping it up and stopping the tractor. My helper says, "Its a big peice of plastic in there and I can;t reach it with a fishhook extractor."

Brett