Fry "appreciation", pics

[estanque_koi]

Hello,
I'm attaching some pics of fry born between the 7th and the 9h of april 2005.
The parents were 1 Kohaku female x 1 Kohaku male and 3 different Sanke females x (2 Sanke+1 Kohaku) males.
There are many fry showing a rather uniform light orange colour that might turn out to be Kohaku, as expected.
Besides there are other phenotypes present. This year the proportion of black fry with yellow head remains quite low compared with the previous year. In my limited experience these black fry develop quite dark, some of them like Hi Utsuri. Last year I got just a few Showa but not worthwhile to keep.
You will see other fry that are quite puzzling. These fry often got rather skinny.
Culling Sanke is not easy at all!
Diego

[Bob Hart]

Great pictures Diego.

So 5-weeks old, is the size what you'd expect?

Wish you the best with your culling.

[koiedge]

Diego,

You are looking for showa? But you didn't spawn for this. I would expect more kohaku and a few sanke. Per the chart in Completely ... Koi by Axelrod. You would expect shiro-muji, aka-muji, and kohaku.

I will have to post some of my kohaku to sanke cross and my goshiki to kohaku cross fry. The goshiki look very similar to your posted fry. The kohaku to sanke just hatched on 5/13/05.

Jeff

[gregbickal]

Excellent fry pictures. Here is what my fry are looking like. Flock Spawn where the only female was a Showa. Males were Sanke, Kohaku, Shiro Utsuri, and Yamabuki.

There are roughtly 1,000 fry in this photo (about 16 days old), 200 of the fry are dark (20%)

[estanque_koi]

Hi all

Bob,
I'm not sure about size. I mean, there is a lot of variation in size, I would say much more among siblings whithin any given spawn than among spawns.
I guess this is an indication of too scarce living food supply and severe competition for live food among the fry. The initial density of fry in the pools (just 1500 liters each) was way too high to be sustainable more than one month, anyway.
If I had solved the Artemia decapsulation issue and had used Artemia after the first week, the fry would be possibly bigger, but I relied on copepods (there were few Daphnias belonging to two different species) and now I believe that adult copepods are too big and have too many spikes for small fry.
Right now they are eating a mixture of three different dry food, three to four times per day, and are growing day by day.
Last year I had newly hatched fry by this date, so anyway this year the fry have a plus of almost one month and a half. I guess I can't complaint, but learned this lesson for next year.

Jeff,
I'm not looking for Showa. Not a single parent of these spawns was a Showa, so expectations of getting any decent Showa out o these spawns are negligible. Did not culled black fry so far because I'm still not confident, I'm too busy, and there are not many blacks. How do you think these black/dark fry will develop? Should I cull them all?

Greg,
your fry look great and very uniform in size. How often do you feed them? Are you using Artemia?

all the best,
Diego

[estanque_koi]

These pics were taken on 22th of May, thererfore the age of the fry was around one month and a half.
There is a big variation in size among the fry. The biggests are around 4 cm in length.
Here you have some more pictures, were you can see how some colour and pattern is already showing up in some of the fry.
Diego

[MikeM]

More food! ... I want too see them at 4".

Thanks for posting their progress.

[luke frisbee]

they do look like they should at this age...
patterns? these are the pretend patterns.

[gregbickal]

I cant wait till mine start showing some color like that. I am feeding them 3 tablespoons (3/4 million) of Artimea every 12 hours. So about 1 1/2 million Artimea a day. Also about 4 tablespoons of powdered flakes twice a day. Not sure if they are eating much of that or not.

I have micro pellets on order, should be here today. I also tried just today, grinding up some pellets to powder and feeding that. Braun Hand blender with chopper attachment works great for grinding flakes and/or pellets.

[koifishgirl]

What I would like to see you guys do is show us a log of the koi from start to maybe six months. From hatch with pics at say two weeks and then four and so on. That is what I plan to do so I can keep up with what parent produces, what and how good they are. It would be nice to see the different types, and them being culled from start to somewhat finished. What a learning thread that would be