There's good news and bad news. First - the bad news; wind damage to the liner around one corner of the fry pond that's filled with the new shiro fry meant we lost some water and probably some fry! The gGood news is that Amanda reported seeing fry along the full length of all 4 pond margins during the week, and they're still there this weekend. Which means they've survived the temperature drop from polytunnel to fry pond, choppy waters from the gales this week, and have enough food too.
In my standard prep for spawnings just before the weekend, I found a single fluke on one of 3 scapres on fish in the grow on system; with spawnings to happen in that water, and combined with observations of the fish - I've decided to treat and delay the kohaku spawning. One of the fish I scraped was the largest tosai in the tank - previously pictured a month ago when it was 41cm. It's now 45cm. Thats the good news. the bad news is it's male. on the one hand, it's
reached a great size for such a young koi, but on the other hand, it's likely to be outgrown by females in the long run - and also I can't grow it on in my females brood fish tank because it's male! I could put it in the males tank and forget about it for a year or two and then see what I have. But, I'm constantly trying to reduce the load on that tank... Measured up a few tosai from the May 14 spawning yesterday, with an eye on the forthcoming South Downs show - I'm starting to think about which koi to exhibit. I've Sizes range from 36cm up to 45cm. I left a couple of photos off this album of koi I plan to take to the show; you'll have to wait until the show to see them! the conflict of interest I have now is finding the balance of continuing to grow the fish on with high protein food and warm temperatures - vs, taking the fish down to ambient and feeding them on a food that will prepare them better for the show.... I may split the fish into some that i extract from the heated system next weekend - there are one or two small ones from the July spawning that are around 23cm - and if I can hold them below 25cm then it gives me the chance to enter one into size 1 at the show. Same goes for the 35cm cut off - My May spawning fish are 36cm and above, so any entries into size 2 will have to come from the July spawning.Here are some from the May spawning - and, please bear in mind the pics have come out a bit more yellowy than the fish actually look like.
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| 37cm |
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| 36cm |
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| 40cm |
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| 38cm |
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| 45cm |
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| 39cm |
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| 43cm |
And a small sample from the July 14 spawning
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| 33.5cm. This is one I'm interested in for the future; check out the back bone - I think it's going to grow really well. Feisty in the floating basket - it wouldnt sit still for me and this was the best pic I was able to take |
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| 30.5cm. This was one I thought might be worth taking to a show; at the 3rd selection, the red on this stood out from the others as being thicker and I thought a higher quality. At the moment, it's looking thin and the skin lacks shine. this might just be down to the condition of the fish right now - but I'm less sure about the future for this one. At the very least - it's a reasonable size and the pattern always stood out for me. |
I've kicked off a kohaku spawning; it's using a female from momotaro that I spawned with last year but the eggs failed. I'm using one of the males from the May 14 kohaku spawning, and one of the new takigawa males that I bought last autumn. I started with a third male - the other one from takigawa that I bought last autumn; but it jumped out of the tank! the tank's covered - and around an hour after putting the males in, Amanda and I walked back into the polytunnel to check on things and as we walked by the tank - the male jumped out! Thank goodness it happened while we were there, and I put it back into one of the growing on tanks and it's playing no further roles in the spawning. that was a close one!
