Showa didnt spawn... again! looked more promising this time though, so perhaps it will just take one more try.
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... |
I set the spawning off a bit late. 8.30 pm to be precise. And I set the IP can to record continuously which allowed me to see the spawning start time, and which male was doing the work. Spawning started around midday the following day. That's later than normal, with the koi typically spawning early in the morning.
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 |
But a few days on, and it looks like most are unfertilised, or just didnt make it. Also interesting is there was not as much scum on the surface of the spawning vat immediately after spawning as I would have expected. And I'm wondering whether the males hadnt fully recharged from their previous spawning, even though that was weeks earlier.
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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| Inside, I've been plumbing in two tanks that have been waiting for attention. This large vortex (4ft diameter, 5ft tall) will give me the opportunity to separate fry of special interest for growing on |
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| And there's another 10k bestway tank being fed by another OJ barrel bubbling K1 home brew filter. |
These 2 new tanks and the existing fry tank are all plumbed into the one Oase Drum filter. The first fry tank and vortex share the same bio filter and the other 10k tank has it's own bio filter. All in all, there's plenty of bio filtration capacity to cover the whole system.
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...
