Tosai...What is your read...

[aquitori]

Quote: Originally Posted by Akai-San I recently spoke with a local breeder asking about the oyster shells in his filters. I asked if it was to soften the water, he said it was actually to harden the water. He mentioned that Sakai of Matsunosuke kept it in their filters to pump up the sumi. Could this be a factor in developing a koi such as this one. Softer water to POSSIBLY fade the sumi away...In any event, if water were to be stabilized again what would happen? Hey, this is getting fun just talking about it. And I'm not even a pond owner yet...boy am I sick or what? LOL.

Isn't the water really soft in Hawaii Akaisan? If that is the case then shimis shouldn't be an issue....

[luke frisbee]

I don't see a Shimmie?
I see two. One at the end of the dorsal and one at the base of the tail on the koi's left side. Since it is a young fish, I am wondering if this is a quality Sanke? Those are big "shimmies" and they are maturing first at the rear of the koi....there might be some more big "shimmies" hidden under all that orange. The owner of this koi could get a wonderful surprise in a couple of years....if they like sankes.

[crazy kujyaku]

Quote: Originally Posted by dick benbow I like the koi very much. I'd probably call it "target". It has that long lanky look like it could get some size in the right pond of bigger deeper water. I have also seen shimmies go away depending on the water. That's a decision you make after keeping koi a few years and learning what works. I used to pick them up frequently with sakai of hiroshima's sensuke stuff, yet hasegawa's stuffturned out clean with no problem!

DB, what does the "deeper water" do for koi keeping purposes? does it help in adding volume to the fish?

While on the subject, what is the ideal depth of a pond?

[dick benbow]

Oyster shell is used to help buffer one's ph and add a bit of hardness to help develop the GH which contributes to helping the black appear.

At this stage, it would be good to know one's water parameters so that they could see if their water was "soft" or hard?

even if you don't have a pond. buy a test kit and run a series of pH KH GH on what will be your source water. might be educational.

[MikeM]

Momotaro Kohaku parentage can include Sanke in the ancestry. It would be very interesting to watch this one grow. As it is, you are seeing the worst of all worlds from a show perspective. The sumi renders it unfit for a Kohaku competition, and not enough for Sanke competition.

Aquitori: So you have some experience in "winter work"?

[B.Scott]

As far as shimmies go I can speak from personal experiance that improving one water quality (in filtration and amount of water changes) does cause shimmies to disappear in many cases I had three kohakus and a tancho that all developed shimmies but when I drasticly increased my waterchanges they disappeared in three of the four fish.
B.Scott

[Bob Hart]

Hi Scott,

The increased water changes, did this just reduce the Nitrates? Or actually add KH, or something else?
Just wondered if you noticed a change in the ponds parameters that may have caused this?

[B.Scott]

Reducing the nitrates was my first priority and to tell you the truth the results were slightly disappointing. As an experiment I tried doing upwards of 15% change-outs a day. I had Bil test my nitrates with his hanna test kit as it in more sensitive than the droplet test I have. End of August I was down to about 10 mg/l Nitrates from around 40 mg/l at the start of the summer. Onthe other hand the growth spurt the koi acheived was quite noticable. And like I said after about 3 weeks the shimmies started to go away. A couple of nice fish that I had written off because of shimmies (one of which was on the tail root of my favorite Kohaku and about 7mm across and very pronounced) were suddnenly back in my heart and had become things to be proud of.
The Kohaku I mentioned took the longest and went from a 7mm jet black shimmie on the tail root to a small cresent in the first summer. This summer I slightly reduced the water changes to about 5% a day but the shimmie kept getting smaller and has now disappered completely. Only one fish retained shimmies and I hate this fish anyway so it doesn't matter. She is waiting for some nice newbie ponder to become a start-up-pond present this spring I think

[Akai-San]

Quote: Originally Posted by aquitori Shimi on the tail joint kinda of a let down, but other than that it's a very nice Kohaku. I think you can scrape the shimi off since the Shimi seems to be on the top of the scale.

Can you really scape the shimi off without hurting the koi? I remember watching the KOI BITO dvd, and there was mention of rubbing off a shimi prior to purchase. Would the sumi comeback if the scale where to fall off or grow back black as the koi gets bigger? Sounds sneaky...

[dick benbow]

Shimie can appear on the outside of a scale which indeed can be scraped off. they can also appear under the scale which poses a more complex problem.
Shimmie's can come back. I've seen many a koi go to a new home cause they were getting covered only to have the owner kicking themselves as they see their koi a few months later free of anything black. Different water-different results!