2020 spawnings now complete

I last wrote after my double night spawning failures...

Needing some sleep after my females let me down, I re-configured the spawning vats and focussed on two females that are more strategic for us and left them for a third night to spawn naturally.

Ofcouse, they both went that night!

Fertilisation was pretty good with the Benikikokuryu and this is the first success we've had with that female in 4 attempts since we brought her on site around 2 years ago. The hatch was good, and I've used fry pond 6 for those fry which have taken well. With summer starting to wane, and autumn fast approaching , I'd expect a slightly longer than average stint in the fry pond for these fry and hope they will achieve harvest size in around 5 weeks from now.

This all happened a couple of weeks ago, and since then I have also completed our spawning season by spawning our Kohaku female Lava Rosa. And, I have one more pond ready to take her hatchlings.

So, after a pretty tough start on the production side of things in May and June, the mid and late season has been fantastic and we have made up the ground and are on course for heading into the autumn with full growing on tanks. We are behind on growth, and still a few hurdles to navigate over in the next 4-6 weeks, but certainly happy with the direction of travel currently.

Amanda and I reflected the other day that we don't remember a 6 week period that has been so intense... It's been worth it though, as we are on course to be able to provide our best range ever from autumn through to next spring.

You may remember we built 4 additional fry ponds over the winter 2018/19 and they are taking some time to mature. My original 2 fry ponds took 4 years so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Fry pond 3 has been the worst offender this year - producing the wrong type of algae for me on 3 occasions, and wiping out a whole batch of Kujaku hatchlings back in May. Now, in August we have the pond humming along like a Rolls Royce and these Trudy Kohaku fry are benefiting from the natural food available to them. For me, it's been a battle hard won to turn this pond around and make it productive.

https://youtu.be/DTn-L43_HSc

There is still much to do to make sure we capitalise on the successes over the last 6 weeks and so our focus remains on production right now, and until our growing on tanks are filled for the winter.