Culling Koi

[DavidWH]

I'm culling nine of my koi. I know that I need to reduce the population their winter home. My goal is to have a good mix in the final pond. These are largely similar fish to ones that I already have.

Here are the ones that are being culled (on Craigslist). Let me know if you see something here that I'm missing.

 

[Mmathis]

Can you explain exactly why you have chosen each fish to cull? What undesirable characteristics are you culling for?

 

[secuono]

Similar to what I have. And I only keep one type of each.
The light gin rin I would keep to grow out and see what it'll look like. I think I see color in patches that might come up? I'd sell off the rest, don't look that special to me. But idk what your others look like.

 

[DavidWH]

Thanks Secuono!

I will post a pic of the keepers soon. They are quick and hard to get a good picture of in the main pond. I've gone from 36 down to 15. I hope to watch the final 15 develop for for a final pond stock of 12ish.

I realized I sawed a hole in the side all of my gopro cases to connect my external mic. I need to order a new case to get under water images.

 

[Lisak1]

Pretty fish! I'd have a hard time choosing!

Have we seen your pond set up? I feel like you may have mentioned a 3000 gallon pond... can your pond can support that many full grown koi? Ordinarily that would be a lot of fish for the volume, but with the right amount of filtration I'm sure it's doable!

 

[brokensword]

Pretty fish! I'd have a hard time choosing!

Have we seen your pond set up? I feel like you may have mentioned a 3000 gallon pond... can your pond can support that many full grown koi? Ordinarily that would be a lot of fish for the volume, but with the right amount of filtration I'm sure it's doable!

it ain't his pond we're worried about, Lisa; it's the temp winter setup!! We're all waitin' and watchin' to see how it works out for him!

 

[DavidWH]

Pretty fish! I'd have a hard time choosing!

Have we seen your pond set up? I feel like you may have mentioned a 3000 gallon pond... can your pond can support that many full grown koi? Ordinarily that would be a lot of fish for the volume, but with the right amount of filtration I'm sure it's doable!

I did say 3,000, but it's closer to 4,000. The total water volume in the system is somewhere between 6,000 and 7,000 gallons.

It has lots of filtration with a main pump at 8,200gph and two backup pumps at a little over 1,000gph. Every time I think about it I add more filtration.

 

[DavidWH]

Can you explain exactly why you have chosen each fish to cull? What undesirable characteristics are you culling for?

Sorry. I missed this one.

I'm looking for a good mix of colorful koi in the final pond. All of these fish are duplicate-ish. Of the similar ones, I kept the ones that I liked best.

I'm almost ready to cull two more fish for the same reason. I'm still waiting for them to develop a bit more so I can choose. That will bring my total down to 13. I'm planning for 10-12 in the final pond.

I've been testing the water regularly and doing 150 gallon daily water changes. So far, the only problem I had was a spike in ammonia early on. I rapidly culled some fish, reduced the size of feedings, switched to Prime for de-chlorination, started adding Stability daily to bio media during water changes to seed bacteria, added an additional pump, added filtration, and went from water changes of 50 gallons per day to the current 150. That seems to have fixed the ammonia problem.

Now that the bio filters are getting established, water quality between water changes is improving. After I cull the next two fish, I plan to slowly reduce the size of water changes while keeping an eye on ammonia levels.