3rd year as amateur breeder

[estanque_koi]

Hello,
This is the 3rd season I'm breeding Koi for fun & learning. Even so, I'm already taking care of lots of fry born from 4 different females, spawning dates 4, 6 and 7/April inside a greenhouse. The fry are doing pretty well, with water temp at 20 degrees celsius (68 Farenheit). In early summer the keepers will go to a 600 Tons pond that currently is my main source of Daphnia. I don't expect keeping more than 0.3 % of the fry by mid june, and half of that in late july. I mean, going from an estimate of 325000 eggs to a final number of around 500 young koi -most probably half of that, in late october. Moreover, if I can get around 50 that make the grade I expect, that would be an excellent result for me. Results from last year spawning are quite encouraging.
Rearing and selecting fry is time consuming, but certainly I find it extremely fascinating. I can only hardly imagine what would be the hobby for me whithout breeding.
Diego

[MikeM]

There are times I would like to share the experience, but the adventures on this board satisfy the urge. I appreciate the effort involved, and applaud those who pursue breeding with a goal in mind ... and not simply flooding the world with culls. 50 worth keeping would be a great success in my eye.

[dick benbow]

congrats on your third year! Breeding koi gets in the blood and hard to stop once you get going. It's quite the challenge!

[Bob Hart]

Sounds fascinating and something I'm sure which could 'grab' you once you get into it.

I'm hoping to 'assist' with breeding Shiro Utsuri's this year, then take away a very small amount of eggs to grow on. I've set up a small pond to manage this and am really looking forward to my little experiment.

Obviously one of the keys to this is to have some decent parent Koi, so that any 'keepers' are at least of some sort of good quality. The female that will be used is a 3-year old Momotaro Koi, males from Seki (if I remember correctly), so some decent quality there.

[estanque_koi]

Some pics of my breeding setup and the breeding process.
All the best,
Diego

[MikeM]

Nice set up.

[Bob Hart]

Now that looks like a busy set-up, very nice. What is that thing in the 8th photo please?

[estanque_koi]

Quote: Originally Posted by Bob Hart Now that looks like a busy set-up, very nice. What is that thing in the 8th photo please?

Hello Bob,
it is a copepod, a small freshwater crustacean. This is the most abundant zooplancton species in the mixure that I get harvesting a big pond. I'm using it as live food for the fry.
Last year I had a rather important mortality of fry when I started using Artemia. It was caused by Artemia egg shells and unhatchet eggs being eated by the fry. They can't digest the shell and die. It is difficult to extract just the nauplius from Artemia cultures. This year I want to decapsulate the Artemia eggs to overcome this problem. The chemical procedure is not difficult and have many advantages:
http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/003/W3732E...0.htm#Contents
involves using sodium hypoclorite (bleach) and later sodium tiosulfate to neutralize the clorine. I'm still waiting for the sodium tiosulfate that ordered one week ago. In the meantime, I must stick to my live food cultures plus copepods and some daphnia harvested from the pond.
Diego

[bekko]

Nice set up Deigo.


If you wash the decapsulated cysts really well you do not have to use sodium thiosulfate. Wash them in a plankton net for 15-20 minutes.

You should try Miona (a type of daphnia). If you can keep good green water going, Miona reproduces rapidly and is an excellent live food. Their numbers double every day and the density can go as high as 50/ml. The record is 100/ml.


-steve hopkins

[koifishgirl]

You can keep the koi and I will take the little girl, she is so cute. I had only a son and always wanted a pretty little girl like that, she looks so sweet.

And what the heck it that "THING" Is it a fish? Strange looking "THING"

I got a question for ya, When the fry hatch out do they look big headed and are all the fry dark. I think mine are hatching and are stuck to the lilies. You can see something that looks like long tails but the head and two eyes are about all I see if that is what I am seeing