Kujaku spawning this morning! And, repairing the fry ponds

Kujaku's went off just like I hoped they would, and it was possibly my best spawning to date. Very few dead eggs, and I'll see tomorrow what the fertilisation rate it.

This is the first time I tried a spawning with just one male, as I only have the one kujaku male. But, he's got fantastic red on him so fingers crossed I get a good cross with the female - who has great body shape and skin.

Here's the male

... and the female

very difficult to get a pic of the two of them; this is about a good as a got




Check it out - try and find a white one! there are almost no dead (white coloured) eggs. The question now is, how many have been fertilised. I'll find out tomorrow.

These are the kohaku and shiro keepers, settled in nicely to their growing on tank. I finished the selections today and saw a fantastic kohaku in my first pan nets worth. I have a about 2 or 3 at that quality level, and I dont have pics of any of them. fumbled around for a camera but could find one. It's the the tank now, so next chance to see it is in around 4 weeks.

After checking the kujaku's first thing this morning, I spend the rest of the morning mending the banks on horseshoe pond. This enabled me to pump water out of chestnut pond and store it in horseshoe pond. Amanda and I will reline chestnut pond one night this week and then we'll pump the water back. Saves time, and it's a more efficient use of the summer days I have remaining.


You can see the water level on horseshoe pond on the right hand side. Building the banks up at the low points gave me another few inches of depth which was enough to take around 75% of the water you can see in chestnut pond (on the right)

I've been planning for kujaku's in horseshoe pond and yamabuki in chestnut pond; but I also have a shusui female which has a lot of merits. here she is a year ago.




I met a chap called Gary yesterday who reminded me how cool shusui are, and it's made me think again about whether I can do some shusui too. they are a marmite fish, but I happen to quite like them. this one is from hoshikin koi farm in japan, but I also have several good ones including a male I've won some decent prizes with at koi shows that I am considering pairing with her.

I gather the fry from each variety are different enough so that I will be able to tell them apart at first selection. Seems like a good compromise; just need to work out the spawning tank logistics in the polytunnel!