pond life ahoy

Been incredibly busy the last few weeks with the day job and everything else has had to take a back seat.

On brief visits to the fry ponds, I've seen very few koi - perhaps the odd one in the margins if I spend enough time looking. Amanda gives me updates during the week and this last week she's been seeing the kohaku's in small groups and when I went down there today, I saw them in groups of 10's in the pond margins.

These fry are a day away from completing their 3rd week in the fry pond and they are around 1.5cm to 2cm long.

Already I can see differences between them - body shape, colour. I can't make out pattern yet, but I don't expect that's long away.

The water level in Chestnut pond has been going down, and I'm guessing there is a leak. There's still enough water for the fry, so topping up slowly and the water level is rising a bit. I've feeding the fry on 0.3mm to 0.5mm fry food and first selection is 2 or 3 weeks away. At which point I'm deciding between:

- draining the pond down, doing first selection and putting the keepers into a recirculation pond in the tunnel, putting a new liner into chestnut pond and having another go with yamabuki and kujaku; and
- leaving the water there and growing the kohaku's on outside.

There's less insect larvae now in the Chestnut pond, and perhaps the kohaku's are eating them (I hope!) and some must have gone onto the flying stage like this dragon fly:

Saw several of these today around Chestnut pond.

In Horseshoe pond there are still lots of insect larvae wiggling around but the shiros are elusive. I see the odd one if I look long enough. Just hope they are getting enough food and a reasonable number make it to first selection. It's a tense time on the project.