Oct 03, 2022

Penultimate fry harvest of 2022

We made a start today on the penultimate fry harvest for this year, which is the phase 4 doitsu metallic / doitsu ochiba cross. It's a first run of the second doitsu ochiba female we brought in last winter, plus our lemon hariwake female paired with beni kikokuryu males.

We ran the lemon hariwake early in the season but lost the eggs unfortunately. So, we're grateful to be able to run her for a second time this season, and in parallel, test out the doitsu ochiba female too. We've been pushing it with the length of the season but the risk paid off and the fry have grown to a good size despite the cooling conditions. Numbers wise, also okay. Certainly enough to be able to satisfy our pre orders for phase 4 and also to stock our own growing on tanks this winter.

The deformity rate looks low and on first look today, the mix looks interesting. So, a good late season harvest all round.

We still have the rest of the first pond to harvest, and then also the second pond of these too, which will take us a few more days.

We are still getting over Covid which struck just before the All England koi show a couple of weeks ago and meant we had to forfeit our place at the show and miss the show entirely. Not good! We have mostly recovered from the Covid now, and thankfully we are moving into the slightly less busy off season.

This week's harvest is the penultimate, which suggests there will be another final harvest this year. And, yes we pushed it even further with another spawning just a few weeks ago with some new brood stock to give them a test. The fry from that spawning are around 15mm currently, and if we're lucky the slightly warmer conditions this week will help nudge them up to 20mm and that is still on the small side for harvesting but we'll take it! There's lots more to update you on; including some amazing koi show results at several koi shows this autumn, and also the output from our chagoi spawning this year which looks amazing basically. More on those aspects next time.

Amanda kneeling in the fry pond clearing the strand algae by hand

Here's Amanda in the fry pond clearing the strand algae by hand. This fry pond was badly affected with strand algae and it took a few goes to clear the pond sufficiently before we could drag the seine net today.

Pulling in the seine net with the new koi fry harvest

Taking a closer look at the newly harvested koi fry

One koi fry with a black and orange pattern

Here's one koi fry with a black and orange pattern

Amazing sunset over fry pond 6 this evening

We were greeted with this amazing sunset over fry pond 6 this evening. Lets hope it signifies a great harvest!

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