Duck weed is crazy stuff

A small clump in the bottom fry pond expanded to cover almost half the pond in around a month and a half, and last weekend Amanda and I got the seine net out to recover the pond.

The pond is lying in wait for my next successful spawning.... Plenty of daphnia in there. Just need some koi now!

And, on the koi. I've had some tough decisions to make with the females.

They've just not been thriving in their tank. Not feeding as much as they should, and generally looking a little lack lustre. Scrapes came up with nothing - I even brought in someone independent to scape, and he found nothing. I;ve changed a lot of water, just in case it had been contaminated. But, no improvements came.

You'll have seen from my blog that I've made lots of small mistakes with the spawnings this year, apart from the first batch of kohaku's - which went really well. In particular, the two showa females have been tried 3 times each. (might even be 4 times). They have eggs, but just don't want to spawn.

After the last shiro spawning - I observed the female shiro was thriving very soon after I put her into the males tank after spawning. Strange - because the females usually take a day or two to get over the spawning. It seeded a thought that there was something about the females tank that was holding the fish back, and so, I moved another female from the females tank into the males tank - and once again, within 24 hours the fish looked a lot happier.

Moving the females into the males pond was on the cards - but, I would lose the benefits of keeping them separate; something I felt was important to improve things in the spawning department. With both showa females not performing in the spawning vat, having tried them several times each, and with their general lack lustre behavior - I decided to move all the fish into the males tank - and close the females tank for a major clean up and filtration upgrade. it felt like a big decision at the time, but within 24 hours I was in no doubt that I'd done the right thing. Behaviour improved, and my focus with the showa's now is to consolidate and perhaps give them one more go in the spawning vat this month.

The females tank is drying out, and I've changed the bio filtration over to a bubbling K1 system which seems to work well for me.

Bio filtration in the males tank is just about holding up to the extra load - and so far, there have been no spawnings. I've moved a few fish on that I no longer need which alleviates some of the pressure on the filter.

Second selection on the kohaku fry this weekend, and I'm really looking forward to that. I also have water in the spawning vats, bubbling away in preparation for more spawning attempts. I've ordered chlorine test kit so I can measure the chemical and remove uncertainty from the process of preparing water in the spawning vat. Seems obvious really. Should have done that before....