early development

[estanque_koi]

Hi Steve and all other members taking part in this thread.
How are your fry developing, Steve? Would like to know what are they currently feeding.
I have got a question: my belief is that if you keep females apart from males during the breeding season, they won't spawn anyway and will end up reabsorbing their eggs. Is it true, or some females might release all their eggs after an increase in water temperature or another change in conditions?
I mean full spawn, not just some few scattered eggs, without males being present, nor any trace of their pheromones.
Diego

[B.Scott]

Diego,
I had that happen to me last summer when I put a fish in the qtank to keep a new fish company. Both female put the one from the pond started to release eggs. I ended up having to remove her and massage the eggs out as they took the water quality down too much
B.Scott

[ranskye]

sure they can ovulate without the presence of a male.
though what is happening is that the ovulation triggers are being met perfectly.
it has nothing to do with keeping them seperate from males to begin with.
same thing could happen if it were with a buch of males all winter or into mid summer and then put into conditions that trigger spawn.
if you move a fish that has eggs you are exposing it to new waters and it may think its time to bring on the eggs...

even in the wild fish may be seperated from males and they will roe up.
it is natures way that in the event of them being solo they still get eggs so that when the creek or whatever burst they may find a male to mate with and reproduce succesfully regardless.
thats why i think it has zero to do with a pheromene. if anything some more able species segregate themseves all together upstream from males or whatever.

i breed a lot and i seperate all my fish. i leave large water changes out of the picture.
I put them together in new water for spawning. if i move them early into new water with no males they will ovualte and ooze and waste eggs. i watched that happen once. it was bad. 100 brilliantly conditioned females.. there were very small male goldfish hanging round as well though. having a look see from outside the cages. maybe stimulating further but by the size of the bellies it was all over anyway. i learnt the lesson.
i no longer move them any earlier than when i want them to spawn.
i can breed any week i want to this way, all through the summer months.
if they were with males and they went through a similar change even from just a decent rain and weather conditions. i would lose eggs and not have fry pond ready.
the male being there will nudge them until they spawn and i think that a male present will make a female spawn in even less than the perfect ovulating conditions that i found that time when i lost eggs.
a pond that has male female might spawn while the one with female only will most likely not at all unless a big change in water occurs.

[bekko]

Diego,

I am surprised at how well this batch is holding up. I moved 4,000 fry to another pond to speed up their growth and could not tell that any were missing from the original pond. I saw a lunker tobi yesterday that is easily an inch (25 mm) long. By the time I grabbed a net, it had disappeared again. Most of them are 8-15 mm.

I saw one black fry in the batch being moved, but all the rest are still yellow. No signs of shiro or aka yet.

They are still being fed everything I can find. They have been getting a lot of 300 micron shrimp postlarvae dry feed and, now, some salmon starter as well. I move copepods and rotifers from other ponds when they are available. Am also culturing Moina and hatching brine shrimp. Most of the Moina and brine shrimp is going to a batch of oranda goldfish which are ten days younger but the koi get some too. The gut contents show that they are still eating ciliates as well. There is a large Euglena-sort-of-thing that has managed to maintain a fairy high density and every fish will have one or two in its stomach.
-steve hopkins

[estanque_koi]

Hi, thanks to Brian, Ranskye and Steve for your replies answering my questions.
I moved Oyagoi to a breeding pool in the greenhouse on saturday 2h 30' pm.
On monday 9h 15' am I found the first spawning of this season. This afternoon, some 34 h later, I took a sample of 10 eggs and had a look at them under the microscope. All of them were viable and I could see he embryos moving inside the egg. I'm attaching a pic taken following the indications of Steve. It works great! (microscope Olympus and digital camera Olympus Camedia 3000).
There were hundreds of ciliate protozoans and some rotifers in the water sample, but can' be clearly seen in the pic cause were moving quite fast.

One question: the male Oyagoi has developed something like two white little balls in the first radius of the dorsal fin, and two more in the tail. They have a waxy appearance. Apart from that the fish is allright and active. I'm attaching a pic, could you tell me what can it be? Might it be carp pox?

[estanque_koi]

Sorry, forgot attaching the pics!

[koifishgirl]

How about some more pics as I am looking for a update.

[estanque_koi]

Hello Kfg, I posted some more pics in another thread:

3rd year as amateur breeder

Right now I'm quite busy and had some problems with my camera. Maybe this weekend I can take some more pics.
How about you? Don't forget taking pictures while building your ponds!
Diego