Fry progress report

[jameskoi]

Fry dying mush less now. But lost hundreds in 48 hrs. Maybe up to a thousand. I dunno really. Still have tons of fry left. I don't know if I can eliminate costia even with 3 treatments. I'm going to stretch it to 4 treatments.

Here's day 16 video (recorded a few hours ago). As you can see, still tons of fry left and these guys are doing well. I see less flashing too.

[ame]

 

[DrDave]

James
Have you fed them brine shrimp that you hatched? That is what I give mine for the 1st 6 weeks. This costia seems to have come in from your food, if I followed the thread correctly.

 

[jameskoi]

Unfortunately, ran out of shrimp eggs. I just have 15 grams left out of 150g. I think that happened on day 12 or something and I slowly transitioned them to dry stuff. If the store had that 1lbs in in stock, I would still be feeding them now. I know some died b/c they went on a hunger strike and those are probably the ones that got sick too.

I discontinued the baby kill fry food. But you could be right. All this mess started after switching to that stuff.

At this point, 95% have fat bellies with my new home brew food. Koi food, flakes and plankton.

The culling has already started. Maybe it's a good thing. My main pond will not be ready for another month I think. By that time, the 130G will be over populated. Now I don't want to mix the fry with the big fish. I don't want to infect or re-infect the biggies since they are going to their new homes soon.

 

[fishin4cars]

Sounds like you seem to be staying on top of it all. Lot harder than I first though it would be reading and watching this. I have read that at a certain age that the larger fry also need to be separated as they will eat some of the small ones off. Have you read anything on this and if so, got any plans on making something to separate fish off from each other?
An idea I just thought would be a helpful suggestion would be to make some net cages out of PVC and small enough net to allow them to float in your big pond. This would keep the fry seperate and give you some different haolding containers for culling process. Our dealer has large 20' x5' vats and he has 5 cages for each vat. that way he can separate size and butterfly from standard, same concept just for sorting your fry to possibly keep cannibalism down. If you would like I can take pics and show you what he's done so you can get an idea. Not something I don't think you could perfect for your situation.

 

[addy1]

Neat idea for those that want to try and raise fry.

 

[RSFish1]

Going form tens of thousands of babies down to thousands and then to hundreds is sort of a blessing. The strong survive and it makes it easier to cull later on. I know this last year I went from thousands upon thousands down to about 150. And I should have culled the black ones since I had so many. But I sold a ton of them for a buck a piece this last weekend as people bought the bigger ones. it worked out great. Now getting ready for the next spawn(s).

 

[jameskoi]

It's been quite an experience so far...

I am in the planning phase to create large cages out of window screen from Home Depot. I started another thread asking about material here...

The buyers have to pick up all my biggies before I can even consider moving to pond now that costia is present and my guess is, the meds may not fully eliminate them, just control them. I had to treat the 130G 5 times with proform-C. This morning, everything looks great. Back to normal, just a few deads at the bottom of the tank, just like before the sudden rise in death rate. I didn't notice any flashing either. So I think it worked well. Let's hope I didn't damage their development with proform-c. But no choice, i think I would have lost almost all the fry if i didn't do anything.

As for the tobies... Oh yeah, I saw one fry with 1/2 tail the other day. The cannibalism started sometime ago. Tobies were swimming around with 1/2 baby fry sticking out the its mouth but they were already dead. Perhaps they did me a favour... Reduced pollution by eating their siblings. haha

I'm starting to see colour forming too but black...

Right not, my only other resource available is the 60G tank... I have about 300-500 fry in there with zero problems.. For the time being, I will have to dump the tobies into small breeder cage inside 130G... I better start soon. There are many tobies 3x bigger than others. When the 130G tank appears to be disease free, I will move tobies into 60G tank and current residence into 130G.

 

[jameskoi]

fishin4cars: Raising fry would actually be pretty easy if they don't get sick... but when they do, I realize if take no action ASAP, they will drop like flies faster than anything I'd ever encountered. Take it from a noob with koi fry but with heavy experience keeping any kind of fish in general... Look out for any signs of trouble and and take action accordingly. No guess work.. need to know exactly why they're dying.

Even though proform-c says no harm to biological filter, i'm skeptical... ammonia is up after I used it and this is the same filter that can reduce 4+ppm to zero overnight when I did the main pond media swap.

So now, I have an ammonia problem again. haha... I have enough ammo lock and prime to save them... I am now a believer that it actually works.

 

[jameskoi]

3 week old fry update:

Nothing much to say. Ammonia is gone now... But I do have questions.

I have a lot of fry developing black. Some looks like to be entirely black and some with black heads and some with spots. No other colours yet. Will the kohakus just show up as red first?

As far as i understand, when I see black when it comes to these parents (see page 3), anything with black should be culled, correct? but i'm afraid some might turn into showas. Would that be possible?

It my assumption is correct, it looks like a 50% cull already (I think at least). What about the ones with black heads? Looks like nice little black tanchos.

BTW, my 60G just started to have problems. A few don't look too good. Milky skin. Noticing death all of a sudden that started a few days ago. I just scoped a sick one. Costia again. Tons of them... Hahaha.. Time to break out the proform-C. This stuff works really works but no scope would have left me guessing again since I was sure 3 dosages in 24hr intervals will not work... The strain appears to be tough. Just before 3rd day of treatment, I scoped and costia population appeared unchanged. Instead of 3 dosages, I think i did 5. Maybe 4. I don't remember. Arrggh... But it worked... Fry looking mighty strong a week later. Just a few drop dead each day for unknown reasons. Not much of a concern for me when everyone else appears to be swimming well and happy.

All I remembered was i shortened the dosage times from 24hrs to 12 hrs at the end.

 

[DrDave]

Without UV from the sun, colors will take much longer to come out on the fry. If you have a place outdoors, put a dozen or so out there and in a few weeks, they will start developing colors and the ones in your basement will still look the same.

 

[koiguy1969]

plant growing bulbs over the aquarium may help with color also... like "grow lux" florecent.

 

[jameskoi]

That's a bummer...

Does that mean the blacks right now will just stay black?

 

[koiguy1969]

i had several that were lookin all black..but none stayed that way....all of them turned to a light blue with black markings. one now is taking on a orange hue and developed a small red spot.

 

[jameskoi]

interesting... I'll grow them out longer. i have mini black tanchos right now. nice circles.

Only problem is, I have too many and need to cull soon. I expect another plague in 130G if I don't move them into 1500G pond soon. I'm counting on my buyers to pick them up on time (as soon as the pond temperature hits 64-65F").

All my biggies are sold now.

 

[DrDave]

After 2 or 3 minor spawns, today I'm getting the major orgy. Keeping me busy. This year I have a 165 gallon nursery tub outside and I am going to hatch them there this time. Time to break out the Methylene Blue.