Have I fed my new koi to the three year olds?!

[Learning to Care for Koi]

This evening I found the most beautiful baby koi at Walmart--such bright colors and such beautiful, graceful fins! So, I purchased 6 for $8 each. We have a c. 9000 gallon pond with 4 3 y.o. koi. Encouraged by what I have read, I introduced the beautiful new babies slowly into the pond. They proceeded to innocently nibble at algae. Well, within a few minutes, the 3 year old bruisers became very active and seemed to stalk the babies. What looked like a violent chase of the smaller fish by the big ones ensued. I hope and pray the newbies have survived unharmed!!! I went out with a flashlight just now to look for them, but the algae is too dense to see very far....

 

[poconojoe]

Hope they find a hiding place. I've never had existing koi chase the newbies. And I have some pretty big koi. 9 year olds that are probably 18"-20" with some serious girth. But usually any new fish will disappear for a while until they become comfortable, familiar, acclimated or whatever you want to call it. It can take a couple weeks or more for them to catch on to the feeding procedure. Meanwhile I'm sure they live off of plants and algae.

 

[Learning to Care for Koi]

Hope they find a hiding place. I've never had existing koi chase the newbies. And I have some pretty big koi. 9 year olds that are probably 18"-20" with some serious girth. But usually any new fish will disappear for a while until they become comfortable, familiar, acclimated or whatever you want to call it. It can take a couple weeks or more for them to catch on to the feeding procedure. Meanwhile I'm sure they live off of plants and algae.

Thank you. This is reassuring. Fingers crossed.

 

[Mmathis]

Oh my! You didn’t quarantine the new fish before adding them to your pond?

 

[poconojoe]

Maybe if you see them chasing those new guys, throw out some of their favorite food to distract them.

 

[Learning to Care for Koi]

Oh my! You didn’t quarantine the new fish before adding them to your pond?

Sadly, I did not study up on the how to...