Buying a few new koi to breed

[EmeraldKoi]

Hi, my advice is a bit different to the posts above, but at the end of the day the choice is yours.

Although ogons are easy to breed and they sell quite well, they are often all the same, and can become a bit boring to breed. If you only want to get one pair, specially to start with I would suggest something that produces at least some variety. Some people want to come in and but a pond full of fish, and they cannot get that if you have 3000 yellow ogons for sale! Also they come once and then dont return if you just have lots of one type of ogon.

On the other extreme, avoid the difficult fish like showas which need extensive culling and prouce low rates of success.

A reasonable pair of sankey will produce red and white babies or kohaku, plain reds and orange fish, sankey themselves, and a few black and white bekko. Also eack fish will have a very different pattern and mix of colour, and so you will have variety in that itself.

If you are breeding only for your pleasure though, go for the fish that you peronally enjoy. It is a lot of work and if you are dissapointed it is easy to loose interest, so do take time to make the right choice.

One of the best things you could do is to get a proven pair that you like from a local breeder who may want to part with them. A long shot, but I have got two nice pairs like that so far!

Good luck!

[gregbickal]

Depends on what you want to learn about. I wish I had a Showa male so I could breed just for Showa. You can cull very early, and then watch for development. Exciting watching 3 color koi go through stages of development.