A difficult month
It’s been a while since my last post and, straight up – it’s
not been a good month.
Two significant problems has meant I’ve lost all of my
keepers; yes, all of them. That’s all
the late summer spawning fry AND all the early summer ones too.
Ok, so here’s how it happened.
After the late summer harvest I selected around 100 x 1
incher’s to grow on. I was holding them
in a floating cage net in my main 10k litre growing on tank which is where my
early summer spawnings were, and they are around 4 inches on average. The plan was to set up another tank and split
the 1 inchers and 4 inchers between the two tanks but run off the same
filtration system. I use a drum filter
you see which makes this whole project viable for me, because of the automatic filter
cleaning saves me a lot of time – so I’m making best use of that by linking the
two tanks up to it.
I bought a tank, and just before setting it up came the
first of the two problems. The cage net
with my 1 inch keepers accumulated a lining of algae and this in itself is ok. But, on a particularly sunny day the algae
must have been generating oxygen with such vigour that there were so many
little bubbles of gas on the algae that the sides of the cage net floated –
literally collapsing the cage net upwards and inwards and – wait for it… -
lifting the 1 inch koi clear out of the water!
That accounted for most of the 1 inchers. It’s difficult to explain how that felt –
those 1 inchers were the result of a series of pricey risks I’d taken on new
females, fry pond liners, my time, friends feeding the koi while I was away etc
etc, and then the possibilities they promised, the opportunity to see the showa
and my new kohaku female genetics play out and so on. Basically extinguished on one sunny
afternoon. A costly mistake, and I have
now learned to put a few stones in the cage net to weigh it down….
After that happened, and with just a few 1 inch keepers left
- it just didn’t seem worth going to all
the effort to set another tank up and I focussed on other priorities.
So next up was adjusting the filtration on my growing on
pond to incorporate an air source heat pump (to heat the water), and change the
plumbing and filtration to improve water flow and quality –which wasn’t as good
as it needed to be. I got some fab pond
plumbing tips from from Syd Mitchell that I learned during his talk at Kangei
Koi Club in September – and they all worked a treat. It was very satisfying once it was done and water
quality improved quickly. I took the
tank up to 23 degrees over a week and about a week later I lost a fish.
I couldn’t understand it because a few weeks earlier I’d
treated all my ponds for all the common parasites as a preventative measure –
and I’d corrected the poor flow in the growing on tank with new plumbing, and
added more filtration media to help with water quality. I did more scrapes, and found nothing. A couple of days later, and another one gone.
To cut to the chase – turns out costia got through 2 weeks
at 0.75% salinity, had regrouped and was enjoying the warmer temperatures
causing major problems in the growing on tank.
I treated again with even higher salt but with many of the 4 inch
keepers lost – and all remaining ones badly affected, I threw in the towel
yesterday.
Both brood fish tanks seem fine, and I haven’t found any
costia there. They are separate systems
in their own right, but only a few meters away from the growing on tank so I am
treating them again to be on the safe side.
I cleaned the growing on tank, treated it with a heavy PP dose
and it’s still purple after 24 hours.
I’ll leave it a few more days, then move a few adult fish into it to
start the filtration cycling through the nitrogen cycle and to check the tank
is clear of bugs before I put anything of value back in it.
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ok, so this is about as exciting as it gets for this blog update. a pond being PP'd. |
I can’t tell you what a blow this has been. But… as a friend said to me the other day, at
least I’ve learned the lesson in year 1 when my harvests have been small. And it’s well learned ahead of year 2 when I
hope to do much better. It also serves as a reminder that this is just a hobby for me - the bottom line is that when it goes wrong its frustrating and upsetting but in the end it is nothing more than a hobby. The challenges I've faced serve as a reminder of how difficult it is to produce koi, let along good quality ones, and farming koi for a living must be tough and risky. That's partly what I hope to share with other hobbyists in this blog; the nitty gritty.
I hope I've learned enough lessons this year, and with the setup now mostly in place, I expect to make a better go of it next year.
So now, all that’s left to do is the big clear up and some
additional set up tasks. I’ve got nets
to clean, hoses to put away, general tidying up and so on. There’s work to do outside on the fry pond
banks, and I need to set up another two tanks in the polytunnel – one more 10k
litre one, and a smaller growing on tank too.
These will be connected to the growing on filtration system – and whilst
it’s risky having all the tanks on one system, I need the automatic cleaning
from the drum to make the project viable for me to do time wise.
Next year, in addition to the two outdoor ponds, I will rear
whole spawnings indoors with techniques I’ve learned from Allan Bennet – a
hobbyist living in Australia who has produced some stunning koi with this method. Bear
in mind they’ve had no koi imports for several decades down under and when you
see the koi the hobbyists over there are producing, it gives me hope. I’m going to try Allan’s technique with two
tanks, probably with showa.
On a more pleasant note, I’ve also been looking for new brood
fish - as I reorganize my parent fish around my priorities of kohaku and showa. My wife’s visiting family in Japan
and took a day out with friends from the UK to travel round some koi farms and
keep an eye out for more parent fish for my project. She had quite an eventful day, picking up
some koi and learning a lot too. I'll share more on that another time - but in short, it was quite an eye opener and hearing about the trip has given me a few ideas, and reminded me what this whole project is about - producing a few good quality koi.
I also
have Mike Snaden on the lookout for a high quality male kohaku which I will pair
with my matsue one. So lots to look forward
to next year – but alas, my project aim will definitely not be realised until
2015 at the earliest.
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