Showa Appreciation

[lildude]

Quote: Originally Posted by dick benbow excellent point about hardness and finishing! For right now Lil' helper focus on providing a healthful growth situation for the koi. It is better to let the koi develop on it's own terms then to force anything. When Dan and Sharon showed the photos to Toshio on their trip to japan a few weeks back, Sakai - san felt that they had done as well as his cement grown tosai. So that was a great compliment to the Olson's for their water keeping. It is our intent to monitor these koi for a period of 3 years and give reports. The top 3 are inside this winter being grown, the others are in a protected pond experiencing winter. This Twist will give us some understanding to see if the others can catch up or is there value in continuing to feed in the winter. Don't want to say anything more to take away from Dan's hard work on preparing the first of 3 articles....

I dont necessarily add calcium carbonate to the water for color purposes, just for biological filter purposes.
I dont yet know which colors behave in either a soft, or hard water content.
Could you please humor me on this subject? It is something I have wondered for an extremely long while.
I have a shusui in my pond that developed shimi on it, and has ceased to develop shimi. but I want to know why. I also have a aka bekko, that was apparently finished at the size of around 5-6 inches. Me at the time did not realise that it would not stay like that forever. Well now it is pond grade koi, maybe even lower than that. But I am still satisfied with it. It is the only confirmed female I have. I have a feeling that Bekko sumi is not yet stable as maybe the gosanke varieties.
Please explain to me how Water Parameters affect color development.

[dick benbow]

I could write volumns to answer your question but some pretty good writers have done it before me and some pretty neat magazine publishers have distributed it....I'm referring to our host Brian and his koi-bito mag....get your hands on issue #8 and read mike snaeden's the 80 cm quest.Since i mentioned earlier you need to grow the koi and let nature take it's natural course to finishing then you'd want to pay attention to page 65 of that issue
which talks specifically about water parameters.

Shusui, asagi, midori, kikusui etc all respond negatively by darking with hard water. to reverse soften it....to learn more about softening water get onto the worldwide web and go to Yume koi's site and read mike's explaination from a number of interesting articles he's written and been published in various koi magazines.His information and influence caused me to purchase and use reverse osmosis water to the benefit of my asagi's.

lot's to learn lil helper...the more of which you absorb the more you realize is out there...at least your starting early in life!

[lildude]

Quote: Originally Posted by dick benbow I could write volumns to answer your question but some pretty good writers have done it before me and some pretty neat magazine publishers have distributed it....I'm referring to our host Brian and his koi-bito mag....get your hands on issue #8 and read mike snaeden's the 80 cm quest.Since i mentioned earlier you need to grow the koi and let nature take it's natural course to finishing then you'd want to pay attention to page 65 of that issue which talks specifically about water parameters. Shusui, asagi, midori, kikusui etc all respond negatively by darking with hard water. to reverse soften it....to learn more about softening water get onto the worldwide web and go to Yume koi's site and read mike's explaination from a number of interesting articles he's written and been published in various koi magazines.His information and influence caused me to purchase and use reverse osmosis water to the benefit of my asagi's. lot's to learn lil helper...the more of which you absorb the more you realize is out there...at least your starting early in life!

Yep, Ill get back to you on this, the bell rang.

[jnorth]

Quote: Originally Posted by dick benbow ....I'm referring to our host Brian and his koi-bito mag....get your hands on issue #8 and read mike snaeden's the 80 cm quest.Since i mentioned earlier you need to grow the koi and let nature take it's natural course to finishing then you'd want to pay attention to page 65 of that issue

Thats a great article Dick. I was really enjoying that whole series.

[lildude]

Quote: Originally Posted by dick benbow I could write volumns to answer your question but some pretty good writers have done it before me and some pretty neat magazine publishers have distributed it....I'm referring to our host Brian and his koi-bito mag....get your hands on issue #8 and read mike snaeden's the 80 cm quest.Since i mentioned earlier you need to grow the koi and let nature take it's natural course to finishing then you'd want to pay attention to page 65 of that issue which talks specifically about water parameters. Shusui, asagi, midori, kikusui etc all respond negatively by darking with hard water. to reverse soften it....to learn more about softening water get onto the worldwide web and go to Yume koi's site and read mike's explaination from a number of interesting articles he's written and been published in various koi magazines.His information and influence caused me to purchase and use reverse osmosis water to the benefit of my asagi's. lot's to learn lil helper...the more of which you absorb the more you realize is out there...at least your starting early in life!

So shusui, asagi, midorigoi, and much more. They are all negatively impacted by hard water.
Hmm..
So I am guessing probably some of the gosanke are positively impacted by harder water, I cant really guess.
You said Yume koi.
hmm, is it www.Yumekoi.com?
There is so much I dont know, and probably a good portion I never will. but then sometimes I think that the koi hobby really only became bloomed for about 40-60 years.
I can expect more to happen in the future.

[lildude]

I was reading my old posts to try and absorb more information that I may have, and probably have missed in the past.
This is a really good thread that should continue for the benefit of others.
My showa, that was a gift from 2 very special people, sanke, Yamabuki are all doing wonderfully in my cold little pond. My koi have surprisingly quite eating unlike the previous years. I recently learned that fasting a koi will improve their shiroji, but I am not sure, because I have been extremely mistaken in the past. My grandfather tries to feed them occaisionaly, but they only really eat maybe 1 or 2 pellets a day.

I read the article on yume koi and printed it up. It is intresting how they, instead of making it straight hard or straight soft, use 2 water spouts, one hard, and one soft to balance out the final hardness in the water. This kind of method would allow a person to have extreme flexibility in their experiments, the only thing that is preventing me from doing this is, the fact that I have no Job, and I would speculate that that kind of equipment wouldnt be cheap, but right now, like aquitori said, or was it benbow? well anyways, like one of them said, right now I shouldnt worry about it too much, just provide a good place for my koi to grow happy, and I agree.

I was wondering if anyone could humor me on something that is quite new to me, maybe all of us.
I am not sure if I have my sources correct, but, what Is New type sumi? once again, I am really not sure what I am saying, but I hear some breeders have their koi, like showa, have new thicker sumi?
Are there any differences between the old and the new?
Once again, Not sure what I am asking.

Also, my Kigoi is developing these 2 red dots. I think it is because the koi is too bright at such a young age. But my Yamabuki ogon is fine, for now.


I have noticed on my showa, its Head hi, has weird scratches on it. Please dont ask me how they got there, but they are extremely small, but one is big enough to let me see what the scratch has done. The beni is real a real deep red, but its color itself sheems shallow, because the scratch has eliminated the beni in that particular spot.
I have learned very little to what can be learned here, but a lot to what I knew prior to this showa, thanks russ, awesome educational opportunity. There is nothing like experiencing it first hand.