the focus now moves onto the kohaku harvest....

the kohaku fry are coming on rapidly now - and if I'd had a little more time last weekend, we'd have pulled them out on the Sunday.

We're leaving them in for the rest of this week and then top priority this weekend will be harvesting them - and quickly prepping the pond to be refilled and made ready for a late summer spawning.

I took some video and pics yesterday which gives you an idea of the numbers I'm seeing.

You can start to see the patterns on some of the koi - so I pulled out the DSLR and took some hi res pics, with optical zoom - and adjourned to the laptop to get a first glimpse of the pattern ratios.

And, it's promising to see quite a few of the koi showing the beginnings of a pattern, and not being totally red, or totally white. You have to look quite closely - and they really need another week of development before it becomes easier to distinguish between them. I've added pics at a higher res than normal so you can enlarge. The third pic is the one to zoom in on - hte first pic shows one corner of my pond, teeming with kohaku! This is the most densely packed area of the pond, but there are fry all around the pond margins - and as far as we can see into the centre too. Signs are good.


I think it's the ones that look a little pinky, rather than orange, or white - that turn out to be keepers.

Video clip - walking along one of the edges of the pond, to give you a sense of the numbers of fry.


video link

Finally - I spoke to Mike Snaden today, and my new takigawa kohaku female completes quanrantine this weekend; looking forward to bringing her home, and giving her a run out.