Trouble Spawning

[KoiPaarl]

So what you are saying is that one must NOT leave the eggs in the same water that the spawn took place in? You must remove the eggs to an alternative location or replace the water with clean water!!.

What would happen if you drained the spawning pond after the spawn and then refil it with new water. This might mean that the eggs are not covered with water for the period of time which might not work either.

Maybe I can collect the spawning net and brushes, hang it into the main pond while I clean out and refil the spawning pond and then place it back in the spawning pond. Do you think that could work?

[koifishgirl]

I am not a pro at this but I would suggest that you start moving the water from the pond you prepaired for the fry to the spawning tank and hope for the best.

[KoiPaarl]

I have found my spawning problem. The book says to use 0.2 milligram of Malachite Green per 1000l of water. That is 360 milligram for 1800 liters of water. As the scale is in grams, I had to convert the milligrams to grams. In converting to grams, I divided by 100 and not by 1000. I therefore added 3.6 grams of Malachite Green into the water in stead of 0.36 grams. That means I overdosed by 1000 times. No wonder nothing happened.

I am now going to clean out everything and start over again with my first spawning pair which a beautiful male and female Showa. The first time round she did not want to spawn. Maybe now a week later she is a bit more ready. Will keep you posted.

[bekko]

You can leave the eggs in the spawning tank or pond, but would need to remove the adults because they will eat all the eggs. The cleaner the water the eggs are kept in, the less fungus problem you will have. You can lift the spawning mop out of the water to move them. As long as they are wet they will be OK. Try to minimize rapid temperature changes though. It is much more difficult and damaging to move fry after they hatch. You may not see the fry when they first hatch as they will sit motionless in the spawning mop or on the sides of the tank/pond. If you shake the mop some will swim off and then settle back down on a surface. It often looks like all the eggs are fungus, only to be surprised a few days later by the number of fry that appear. Malachite is tircky to work with because the toxicity depends on temperature, pH, hardness, etc. Sometimes even the recommended dose is too strong. Methylene blue is much more forgiving.

-steveho p

[ranskye]

i wont reply about the offspring cause i mainly produce feeders, im trying yeah im not finding many show fish among my batches ...but anyway i have bred hundreds of pairs of kois over the years and for me spawning koi is moslty about the water you are spawning them in as long as it is spawning season and they have reasonable eggs.
i have never had to cool or heat the water to induce a spawning response.
what i do is always use brand new water. my water is from a bore and so has little nutrient or ammonia etc compared to the pond the fish are kept in and as such it makes the fish think it has just rained having paired them up in the freshly filled pond.
i will point out that i run my main brood pond fairly dirty, but this seems to help me to have them not spawn untill i want them to. as ive said before i dont even mind some salt in the pond as i believe this also helps me to keep them from spawning, doesnt hurt anyway.
in rain water there are very few salts. so thats just my way of thinking.

i do not need to rely on moon phases either or sunny periods. none of that seems to matter to my koi. i prefer rain for spawning and then sun afterwards but my schedule of breeding doent allow for me to wait for the ideal conditions.
a major trigger for koi would be rain. it is que for many species of fish.
rain often equals new cleaner water and the deal goes that the fish spawn after a rain and leave their eggs around the place in waiting, the rain stops and the water then contains nutrients as the floods waters drop, so a few days after spawning the hatched out fry will have food from the bloom that has occured. this is how i see natural spawnings anyway.
with rain you often get these high and lower pressure systems and temperature changes etc so that might be one way but it doesnt seem to be sure fire enough for me, i find new water does it everytime regardless of anything else.
so i keep my fish seperate in their sexes, in cages or net pens i have all my females and in another cage pen within the same pond ill have all my males.
come spring to summer time they have plenty of eggs, often in different stages of maturity. but i pick out females i like the colours of and that are fat. ive found even the ones with half bellies still spawn, ill use them if i desire those colours in my fingerlings quickly it just means less eggs.
out of twenty fish i may find one that hasnt spawned which i throw back in the pen of "yet to be spawned fish" to breed next time round.
this allows me to know which ones to pick next time and not to stress out then ones that i am resting, so that they may roe up again.
when i choose males there is no real need for checking for milt as they will all no doubt have it happening at that time of year if they are healthy, just it may be that it is not running so much. but within a day in the new water next to the female that is beggining to ovulate he starts to run in his milt production. he may do it because of the new water but alos he gets turned on by the presence of a female.
not many of my males will have rough operculum /gill plates until they go in the new water some do and they are often running better in the milt department. this may happen if they find theyre pond water gets a good percentage of rain water during rains but they are kept a few metres from the female pen so nothing spawns and rain by itself never means a major change of water quality in such a big brood pond..i often top my brood pond up with recycled effluent pond water.

if however i dropped nearly all the water and changed it with bore water i am sure within a few days they near would all spawn. i find this can happen regardless of presence of males.
as such i believe that the female is the major one that decides and gives indication to the male that she is ready to go. she ovulates and he pushes her around. the males seem to know which ones to push anyway.
the thign koi fish girl mentions is correct, most of the males after spawing will be rough on the gills and sometimes on the pecs but as i say i think it is the female firstly that decides she is ready- or should i say is the egg decider when the triggers are present. i find males to step up to the challenge even if they arent rough before hand. so if you have a rough gilled male he still needs a ripe female and the triggers to force the female to get her chemicals flowing.


this year i decided to breed a few pairs of gin rin in one new pond as they seem to get predated upon when i mix them with other types when breeding.

i put the females in a spawning cage in a new pond and left the males in a cage in their home pond and intended on pairing them up in the new pond the next afternoon.
i did this as i wanted my bore water to settle out some more iron.
it was still a bit rusty and i didnt want the rust to settle on the eggs or matts but i figured i would get them pairs ready as i had time and the net pen was dragged up ready to choose from as i was selling some of the uglier breeders off also that day.

now i thought that maybe i would lose one females eggs as i have seen females just go on their own before in new water but instead of dragging the net pen up two days in a row i took the risk, problem was these fish where in the middle of their breeding season and apparently all primed up ready and as a result i lost nearly every egg from about 6 females that first night.
no males in sight in that new pond! just half a dozen females all spitting eggs on their own.

i new it was possible but didnt think it 100 percent risk. now ive changed my mind with the experience.
i think this goes to show the power of new water and how ready the fish are to begin with in regards to their spawning season.

i have from august through to late february to breed my koi if i can keep them with eggs this long but as time goes on they seem to jump at the chance to release and the triggers could be brought on just by putting the males with the females in the main holding pond.
this has happened in some fish that i was holding together for sale in the main brood holding pond but the others that were seperated did not spawn.
in this we can suggest that the male certainly has something do do with it also as the other females that were seperated from males by a few metres did not release eggs. there was no rain, my water was still fairly dirty but it was cloudy and the females where ripe enough and stuck in a cage with males.

for you, you could hook up a hose to your roof down pipe when it rains and fill up a spawning tank and i reckon that fish will spawn as long as it isnt the case like steve said- some fish just have bloated bellies.

i think that it is possible that the first pair you tried were either not ready or the water or other triggers werent enough.
i dont know whether your water was fresh and new or full of nutrient but it may be the case that after a few days that the nutrient was taken in by a bloom in your spawning tank and as a result the next pair thought that the water was new like rain.
i think we would all agree that there are many things that can be a trigger for succesful spawning but for me its about keeping them ripe, among females only in poorer water quality and then pairing them in new rain like water.

[ranskye]

i wont reply about the offspring cause i mainly produce feeders, im trying yeah im not finding many show fish among my batches ...but anyway i have bred hundreds of pairs of kois over the years and for me spawning koi is moslty about the water you are spawning them in as long as it is spawning season and they have reasonable eggs.
i have never had to cool or heat the water to induce a spawning response.
what i do is always use brand new water. my water is from a bore and so has little nutrient or ammonia etc compared to the pond the fish are kept in and as such it makes the fish think it has just rained having paired them up in the freshly filled pond.
i will point out that i run my main brood pond fairly dirty, but this seems to help me to have them not spawn untill i want them to. as ive said before i dont even mind some salt in the pond as i believe this also helps me to keep them from spawning, doesnt hurt anyway.
in rain water there are very few salts. so thats just my way of thinking.

i do not need to rely on moon phases either or sunny periods. none of that seems to matter to my koi. i prefer rain for spawning and then sun afterwards but my schedule of breeding doent allow for me to wait for the ideal conditions.
a major trigger for koi would be rain. it is que for many species of fish.
rain often equals new cleaner water and the deal goes that the fish spawn after a rain and leave their eggs around the place in waiting, the rain stops and the water then contains nutrients as the floods waters drop, so a few days after spawning the hatched out fry will have food from the bloom that has occured. this is how i see natural spawnings anyway.
with rain you often get these high and lower pressure systems and temperature changes etc so that might be one way but it doesnt seem to be sure fire enough for me, i find new water does it everytime regardless of anything else.
so i keep my fish seperate in their sexes, in cages or net pens i have all my females and in another cage pen within the same pond ill have all my males.
come spring to summer time they have plenty of eggs, often in different stages of maturity. but i pick out females i like the colours of and that are fat. ive found even the ones with half bellies still spawn, ill use them if i desire those colours in my fingerlings quickly it just means less eggs.
out of twenty fish i may find one that hasnt spawned which i throw back in the pen of "yet to be spawned fish" to breed next time round.
this allows me to know which ones to pick next time and not to stress out then ones that i am resting, so that they may roe up again.
when i choose males there is no real need for checking for milt as they will all no doubt have it happening at that time of year if they are healthy, just it may be that it is not running so much. but within a day in the new water next to the female that is beggining to ovulate he starts to run in his milt production. he may do it because of the new water but alos he gets turned on by the presence of a female.
not many of my males will have rough operculum /gill plates until they go in the new water some do and they are often running better in the milt department. this may happen if they find theyre pond water gets a good percentage of rain water during rains but they are kept a few metres from the female pen so nothing spawns and rain by itself never means a major change of water quality in such a big brood pond..i often top my brood pond up with recycled effluent pond water.

if however i dropped nearly all the water and changed it with bore water i am sure within a few days they near would all spawn. i find this can happen regardless of presence of males.
as such i believe that the female is the major one that decides and gives indication to the male that she is ready to go. she ovulates and he pushes her around. the males seem to know which ones to push anyway.
the thign koi fish girl mentions is correct, most of the males after spawing will be rough on the gills and sometimes on the pecs but as i say i think it is the female firstly that decides she is ready- or should i say is the egg decider when the triggers are present. i find males to step up to the challenge even if they arent rough before hand. so if you have a rough gilled male he still needs a ripe female and the triggers to force the female to get her chemicals flowing.


this year i decided to breed a few pairs of gin rin in one new pond as they seem to get predated upon when i mix them with other types when breeding.

i put the females in a spawning cage in a new pond and left the males in a cage in their home pond and intended on pairing them up in the new pond the next afternoon.
i did this as i wanted my bore water to settle out some more iron.
it was still a bit rusty and i didnt want the rust to settle on the eggs or matts but i figured i would get them pairs ready as i had time and the net pen was dragged up ready to choose from as i was selling some of the uglier breeders off also that day.

now i thought that maybe i would lose one females eggs as i have seen females just go on their own before in new water but instead of dragging the net pen up two days in a row i took the risk, problem was these fish where in the middle of their breeding season and apparently all primed up ready and as a result i lost nearly every egg from about 6 females that first night.
no males in sight in that new pond! just half a dozen females all spitting eggs on their own.

i new it was possible but didnt think it 100 percent risk. now ive changed my mind with the experience.
i think this goes to show the power of new water and how ready the fish are to begin with in regards to their spawning season.

i have from august through to late february to breed my koi if i can keep them with eggs this long but as time goes on they seem to jump at the chance to release and the triggers could be brought on just by putting the males with the females in the main holding pond.
this has happened in some fish that i was holding together for sale in the main brood holding pond but the others that were seperated did not spawn.
in this we can suggest that the male certainly has something do do with it also as the other females that were seperated from males by a few metres did not release eggs. there was no rain, my water was still fairly dirty but it was cloudy and the females where ripe enough and stuck in a cage with males.

for you, you could hook up a hose to your roof down pipe when it rains and fill up a spawning tank and i reckon that fish will spawn as long as it isnt the case like steve said- some fish just have bloated bellies.

i think that it is possible that the first pair you tried were either not ready or the water or other triggers werent enough.
i dont know whether your water was fresh and new or full of nutrient but it may be the case that after a few days that the nutrient was taken in by a bloom in your spawning tank and as a result the next pair thought that the water was new like rain.
i think we would all agree that there are many things that can be a trigger for succesful spawning but for me its about keeping them ripe, among females only in poorer water quality and then pairing them in new rain like water.

[koifishgirl]

I have a question to ask you This past spring my Gin Matsuba did not spawn with the male. Later on I noticed her swimming and rustling in the shallow water by herself. Was she so to speak releasing eggs on her own? I thought she was flashing to relieve herself of parasites maybe. Could I have been wrong. Or to females pair up to get rid of the eggs

[ranskye]

She may have been releasing but i would think that more likely she was just cruising, ive seen fish in my effluent pond face first having a feed in shallows.
i dont know that they gang up to spawn with other females just that in my case they were all ovulating as they were all triggered by the water and were totally ripe and ready to go the days or weeks before. id suggest they wouldve still all spawned even if twenty metres away spaced out in their own cage.

i could have fifty fish out of 55 that i could spawn tomorow night with my technique. no bull. im lucky to have the bore water that is good.

OR i could spawn batches of 8 to 12 females every two weeks for the next 10 weeks. then my season is over. i do it the second way as i will then have ponds ready as i go to take the fry and also i will get fish of different sizes for market and still have a new pond of 3 cm fish in 3 months from now for sale.
i only have ponds ready as i harvest them and at the moment i have many ponds with small fish growing up and no empties till next week which i will spawn in in a fortnight.
i actually sell mostly 3 cm fish so it makes sense to have them not spawn all at once and get too big or i have to underfeed them to keep em small but then they get skinny bodies and big heads.
im trying to sell out all my cullers but im finding only 20 fish worth keeping out of thousands.

i have sent you a pm on your other questions but i was in a hurry and didnt expain everythign very well.

i spawn my pairs in cages direct in the pond that the fry will grow.
it is new water, the pond has been emptied a week or more previoulsy and limed and filled a few days prior to spawning. someitmes i use fertiliser but there is often a good greening up just from the mud bottom and the organic load from the last crop.
last time i used a bag of chicken shit and a half bucket of urea and some DAP- phosphate and a hanful of potash.
i have used more organic stuff in previous times but was lazy this time round.

i rely pretty heavily on artificial feeds supplementing my live feeds but i find the first week is important to have some live stuff in there other than water and dust feed.

when i pair em up, i have lids on the cages to stop the broods escaping and i open the lid the morning after the first night and remove the egg laden matts and drop them in another cage to hatch. i use a wire hook on a rod, like a small gaff.
these spawning matt holdiong nets sit a metre or more away from the parent spawingin cage so they dont have time to dry out during air transfer.
then i put more new nett mesh for the next nights spawn in with the broods as often they will spawn for two nights in a row.
sometimes i will get zero eggs the second night and a really heavy spawn the first night. other times its even or other times its the second night thats the best. dunno why but it doent matter much.

i will pull out the second nights eggs the next morning leaving no eggs with the fish and then later i will remove the broods identify sex again and put them back in the brood pond net pens.

i have tried the techniwue of spawning in a tank but i find that the water gets dirty quick and that the temp is often cooler than the pond. this means i lose a day or more waitng for hatch.
it is generally more hassle for me, which i guess is part why i dont have the ability to target my best breeder outcomes and see what each pair gives me alone. i could just try one pair in the cage in the pond but im scared ill run out of fish for sale i spose if they dont produce a lot.
last time i did three females after my gin rin mistake and i have about 2/3 of th numbers i ussually get. these fish i use mostly are about 2 kilos each.

i have run water from a pump in the new pond into the tank and back out but ive found it is an uneccesary hassle as they do not harm each pother in the cages and its pretty easy to handle them in there and i can tell which pairs or groups spawn by the splashed water on the lids.

if you dont have access to a full pond worth of new fresh water then spawning in a tank would be the best option.
once you have eggs you can move them right into the blooming pond exactly like steve says.
in this instance you might like to run a pump into the tank to get the water the same temp etc. before moving eggs or you could hatch them out in the tank and release but it would be better quality water in the main pond i reckon, you can do the drop the old water out and fill with new and there is no real need to drop all of the tank out untill its dry.
id do the exchange so that the eggs dont get dry.
often eggs stick to the sides.
i have worried about losing eggs to fungus before but these days dont let it bother me.


these days i use more parents and dont worry about fungus so much but i suffer the ability to determine which parents produce which fish.
if i had two prize parents im sure id try save fungus attack more so.

if i know that the water will be particulalry warm over the next few days i can pull back on the numbers i breed or i will have too many fry hatch out as fungus attack is way less on warm days.
sometimes if i get the numbers worng like last time i did some goldfish i will have tooooo many fry and naturally osme of them die out which i dont like to see as i believ the pond ends up carrying less than it otherwise could if i dint get die back.

i have not entered the real pretty fish market yet, im in the dark ages with my spawning comapred to hi tech situations but i get the numbers just not quality colourings.

[KoiPaarl]

First try the eggs got fungus and I lost them all
Second try took the Showa female out after 5 days when nothing happened
Third try, I overdosed on Malechite Green and lost all the eggs
This Fourth try again with the female that did not want to spawn the first time around

Got the spawning pond set up, brushes in, spawning net in, fresh clean water in, temperature on 25 Cel and placed the female in today at 2pm. This evening at 19h00 I will place the male in and lets see what happens. Male won second in its class in show in May this year.

[KoiPaarl]

Male on left in picture when he was a year younger. Here is the correct female. She has developed a lot since this photo a year ago.