Shiro spawned, but It's a white out :-(
Moved onto shiro - same pairing that last year delivered loads of eggs and good fertilisation, hatch rate etc.
This year, I recorded the whole spawning on my IP cam, and it looked promising
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Males jostling for position |
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This male (it's the smaller of the two koi) did most of the hard work |
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The two males, chasing down the female |
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the other male wasnt a total bystander... |
Loads of eggs laid...
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Pic taken in the evening after spawning. So, around 5 hours after spawning finished. Too early to tell fertilisation rate from the visual check |
It leaves me in a bit of a predicament, and lacking in hatchlings.
I'll wait to see if there are any hatchlings. There may be some, and if there are enough then I'll give them the fry pond. That would be a surprise based on how the eggs are currently looking.
So, I really need my showa's to spawn and I am a bit concerned to be honest that as I've tried several times with each of them already, that they either will spawn but too late in the year for me to make best use of the fry. Or, they wont spawn at all. I'll keep plugging away.
I am also looking at alternatives. And I think I need to bolster my males population because when I reflect on the last month or so - I've gone with the kohaku and shiro females that spawned successfully last year, but experienced zero or almost zero fertilisation this year and with very little scum on the water surface post spawning, I'm wondering whether the males didnt have enough time to recharge from their May spawnings. Last year, I had one pair of males spawn and fertilise eggs two weeks in a row. But this year, the pattern is different.
Other news....
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The fry pond we relined just over a week ago is now green! So, its part way through the cycling process |
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And there's another 10k bestway tank being fed by another OJ barrel bubbling K1 home brew filter. |
This basically means my set up is substantially complete - it's only taken 1 and a quarter years! And with the tanks in place I am in a better position to be able to deal with decent sized fry harvests and growing the better tosai on over the winter.
Second selection on the kohaku fry will probably be in 2 weeks time. We're seeing glimpses of the odd one that looks really good, and a lot that are not what I'm after. I'm trying not to look to hard and will reserve judgement until the selection. There are a few tancho's in there...
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