Further, they are *famous*
for being easy to tame and will learn to hand-feed readily.

They are My wife got her first "kissy" from it this evening, that's
after, erm... 26 hours in the pond.

Betty (who turned out to be Bert really) is an Ochiba, and he was/is always
the first to swim towards us. We can actually take her out of the water
(we don't, but we tried once). She is worse than our cats, and is a real
pet. And indeed, she "forced" the rest of the fish to do the same. Even
the small baby koi we bought this year love the hands thing, they just saw
their big bro' do it and follow suit.

And - it seems
that once *one* fish does it, the rest get jealous and want to do it, too.
That's another of the fish on my Wish List.

They got my attention after reading more about them being so tame & strong.
Apparently, in a Japanese pond you need at least one of them, as a black
fish is supposed to bring luck. "Mother" of all Kois. Hmmm... those
chagois looked quite nice as well...

If you find CompulsiveKoiBuyersAnonymous, please sign me up right after
you
. . . (sigh).

:-)

I purchased some of
the Gold (with the color enhancers) and had to give it away: my white fish
were taking on a distinct "blush".

I have that one too, and the "problem" there is that it contains carotene,
which also makes white go pink. Apparantly (I'm not an expert mind !) the
food with Spirulina does a better job (Hikari do that one also). Mexicans
eat that too (it's an algae) and it only deepens the red and doesn't turn
white into pink. FWIW.

The *really* high-end fish food I was talking about has silkworm pupae
in it

Ah, I have that stuff too :blush:, but not from Hikari. It's from Velda,
and I don't think most of their products are really up to snuff, but the
dried silkworms are pretty good IMHO. The fish go crazy when I feed that,
but I also read it should only be fed when it's really warm, and only once a
week, as it can cause diabetes - or so I heard.

Something to really think about: I found a reference that claims that magoi
actually came from ... Persia (Iran/Iraq). Seems to be relevant to the
current discussions no ? :-)

Theo