Growth in a years time

[Tom C]

I know a lot of us don't think about growth this time of the year, but what is the most growth you got out of a koi in one year?

Can you also tell us a little about your pond (stocking levels, water changes, filtration, and what your ponds made of)?

[luke frisbee]

I've gotten 15 inches out of one tobi in the past year. now it is MAYBE 17 inches. it is a big ol deep bodied always ready to eat and never wanting to stop butt-ugly Sanke-esque...with young fish that is easy

50,000 gallons
50-75 Fish nothing over 24 inches ( these are 2-3 yr olds), and most are around a foot at 15 months.


three from that same flock spawning as the tobi are Still less than three inches long....two of them very attractive, and the other is just plain odd orange

[joe bauer]

the most growth i have gotten in a year was 10". that was from fry (1/4") until the next spring when it was 10". the next largest from that batch was 8" and there were several of them. most were in the 4" - 6" range and some of its siblings were still 2" when that fish reached 10".

[gregbickal]

This year I had a Chagoi fry get to 12".
Many of my Japanese koi (now 3 year olds) grew 6-7".

Its been a great year.

[Tom C]

Greg, how that ochiba you got from Japan? Any chance of seeing a picture of it?

[koiczar]

I picked up 7 inches this year on a jumbo Maruyama tosai kohaku and 8" on a jumbo Momotaro tosai sanke. They are now 19" and 21" respectively.

[James P]

Actually 'inches' doesn't tell you too much. It would be better to work in percentages of annual growth. As I mentioned in another post below, koi are indeterminate growers but slow in growth with age. This is because growth can be length, but it is also girth and specialized growth such as gonad growth.

So a fry--one year old can grow by 100-300% plus easily
But a two year old tends to grow by 25- 40%
a three year old grows by about 25- 30%
a four year old grows by about 20- 25%
a five year old grows by about 15-20%
a six year old grows by about 10-15%
And over six growth is about 2- 6 %

If we look at jumbo tosai ( 19 inches) and we see that that they can go for three years with 40% per year, if this kept up then at 7 these fish would be 102 inches or 8.5 feet long!
So do not be fooled by the idea that koi grown large as babies will keep up the same % growth rate.
You could go by weight, where a 75 gram tosai could be a 4000-5000 gram jumbo in 6 or 7 years.

[luke frisbee]

JR,
We were going to play the game a little while longer. it's not like most of US don't know that...we wanted to play it out though...make it look like we were nicey-nice.
Everyone knew where this was headed, and what the reason was.
BTW I just measured my Mattsonuske sanke and it is 16.345 inches long. You think it's hard getting down to the hundredth of an inch you should see how hard it was for me to get the thousandth...i had to measure TWICE to make sure.

[James P]

I understand. I'll be quite-- Merry Christmas all.

[joe bauer]

i find it very interesting to find out what growth rates others get and compare it to how my fish do.

i hope more people will post on this.