250 Showa Koi Fry

[addy1]

Great job! Maybe you should get a degree in fish fry care and raising................

 

[ed2]

Lol you may joke but I am seriously considering doing a distance learning bachellor degree with honours in fishery science/fish farm science/fishery management or similar once I have all my medical degrees sorted.. although it is going to be a long way away because I have to do a bachellor of science with honours in Paramedic Science, which will be finished in 2015, then I want to do graduate medicine which is another 4 years, so maybe after that? lol!


Ed

 

[ed2]

Hi guys,

I have decided to perform my first 'cull' today.

When I say cull, I mean that I have set up a small glass aquarium with a 25W heater, a plant and an air stone. I have noticed a few times that there are still some tiny fry in the pool and I was worried about cannabalism setting in soon (despite copious amount of food being in the water, it is natural selection I suppose?). Anyway, I have taken the smaller fish that clearly aren't growing as quick out of the pool because I feel that they were struggling to develop - perhaps not hunting as well as the majority that are 2-3 times bigger?

So, I put around 10-15 'runts' into this seperate tank and I have put loads of brine shrimp in for them. I haven't been feeding as much brine shrimp into the pool and the bigger fish snaffle it up very quickly now (they are being weaned onto pellet crumb).

The smaller fry went into the tank and I noticed their bellies were pretty flat. Now their little bellies are crammed full and they are hunting like mad. The water is increasing to 27 degrees celsius slowly (at 23C when they went in) and there is a good circulation/current due to the airstone. I feel this is the perfect way to grow these chaps much more quickly. They literally just have to open their mouths and the food would find its way to them because of the whirlwind effect caused by the air stone!

I did notice, however, that one very small guy was struggling really badly. He was actually being washed around and spinning. His fins haven't developed and he is still like they fish I got when they came at 2-3 weeks old! So, I have taken him out into a little pot and noticed he is struggling to hunt. I have literally packed it with brine shrimp so that he doesn't have to exert too much effort to get the food without any compeition from other fish and plenty for him to eat. He is really weak and barely able to swim - it genuinely looks really malnurished (spelling).

(As a reference for his size, those dots you can see are the brine shrimp I have put in for him and they are freshly hatched!)


As for the other fish, here they are at 4-5 weeks old

Excuse the waste on the bottom, I have cleaned the bottom again now.



Ed

 

[addy1]

your amount of waste makes mine look like a sewage tank. Fantastic job you are doing.

 

[ed2]

Haha I net it morning, mid morning, midday, mid afternoon and evening..: in fact my routine is to walk into the room, clamp the brine shrimp airline off to let them settle, spend 5 minutes dredging the bottom with a brine shrimp net and then feed them its working but or some reason I am getting ridiculous build up of nitrite all of a sudden.... Ammonia is fine... I've upped my water changes anyway. I have been doing 10% at night but I'm going to start doing 150 litres morning and night until its back to untraceable amounts.

I'm enjoying it though! I'll see if I can get a close up tomorrow as it will be officially 2 weeks since I got them

They are mostly over an inch now and really starting to broaden out... Pictures will follow

Ed

 

[thematt311]

Honestly netting has been saving my ass lately netting and water change def beats filtration In my opinion. I bought a bag of filter floss basically pillow stuffing put it in my aquarium net and really stir up the tank and filter with the net and toss the fluff what the heck I'll update mine come check it out n a minute.

 

[j.w]

Nice of you ed to try to save the little ones and the tiny whelp. Might turn out to be your best fish, who knows!

 

[thematt311]

Keep up the good work I kinda loss my passion for the koi for a few days but watching ur posts def got me reinspired it's funny how tht works keep pushing on good call on separating the small ones from what I've read back in the day the culled the big ones called Tobys and only kept the small ones I cant do it so like u when I say I've culled my koi all tht means is tht I put them in another home I've upped my temp 2 82 and added a little salt because I was seeing what I thought was ich guess it worked because no more spots

 

[j.w]

Matt don't lose your passion for the little koi...........they need you to survive. Hope things get better in your life and that your happiness will return as it once was. Life is full of change and we never know what path it will send us down and it could end up being greater than we ever expected it could be. I'm glad Ed has helped inspire you to continue on w/ the koi. It has been fun watching both of you raise these fish and seeing how much you both have put into their care.

 

[ed2]

Well, sadly I had a bit of a devastating day. It sounds a bit OTT and I guess it is but I came back from the library today (first time I've been away from the house for more than an hour with nobody popping in and out to check and feed the fish! lol) and found one of the bigger fish dead floating on the surface .

I checked the levels and nitrites are still up, and the ammonia has come up today too. I'm not sure if this was the cause since only one seemed to have been effeced but I did an 80% water change as a precaution anyway. I am absolutely petrified now in case I lose more!

I don't know what's going on. I've worked out my filter has obviously only cycled as far as developing nitrosamonas and hasn't yet got a colony of nitrobacters. The problem is even after an 80% water change today (temperature balanced carefully and dechlorinator used!) and my nitrites are still showing at 0.3-0.5mg/l

Ed

 

[thematt311]

Now u have to make a call what type of adult fish u want I went with my all whites and multi colored koi so the solid yellows went outside turns out I had 80 fish in 55 gallons now I have about 30 inside and 60 outside in 100 gallon so for the grater good id atleast ill say out of my 100 fry only 20 are multi colored and off those 10 look really nice. Sorry to hear about it know everyone is worth keeping but u gotta make one pool your best pool with idea conditions for growth of the best ones. As always pay close attention with keeping water changed and checking levels until ur bio catches up u might be at a spike and when it's over u won't have to do much water exchange i now do about 7 gallons every other day 3 gallons here 3 there only from vacuuming out the waste. Hopefully u can make sense of this sorry about the fish but either way it still beating me 2 out of 250 is Alot less loss then 2 out of. 90

 

[ed2]

Hi Matt, thanks for the sense you put on it, it is helpful.

I have decided on a complete overhaul of my pond based on advice from Waterbug and because somebody on another forum said they would be interested to see somebody test Andrew Moo's statements about raising big koi.

This means in preparation of growing on my best fry, I will be selling the stock from my pond, setting up a 5500 pump to act purely as a vortex effect or TPR as it seems to be known, adding a retrofit drain and a skimmer, adding a UVC, a sieve and a cartridge polishing filter as a prefilter system for my gravel bio/veggie filter. I'll be adding in an auto-feeder along with an automatic pump set on a timer to empy 0.84% of the pond's volume every 2 hours. There will be a drip irrigation running through a carbon pod filter with the sole purpose of replenishing the wasted water, set at a rate of 0.43% an hour (to allow for filter splashes, margin of error for calculations on the auto waste pump and for evaporation).

I will then see what I can do with my favourite koi in one season

So, I think the answer to your advice is that I am going all out now. God I think I love my fry too much!! And I also think I've caught a bug - I expect I'll be raising fry again



Ed

 

[thematt311]

You mean Andrew the Asian dude from the grow ur koi fast video if him he's def on it he makes alot of sence and most of it seems so like it should be obvious but I dont think about it til he says it I watch like 3 videos of his on just making koi big I was also thinking of giving half of my koi to my bro when his pond is built because I now kinda get what can breed and produce ideal off spring keep it up you gotta invest now and when u do it again u still have all the equip Nd exp next time.

 

[ed2]

Yeah definitely! Next time I'll have the set up running outside for at least a month and seed it with mature media before I even think of getting the fry! Green water would have helped substantially I think!

And yep, that's the guy! I'm redoing my pond as best I can for the very purpose of growing these fish well

Ed

 

[ed2]

Here we are... a close up at 4-5 weeks old...

The fry aren't as developed as Matt's, and they seem to be about a week behind every step of the way so far - I expect colours by next week!!! :neutral:

Ed