Tristan wrote:

I usre am not into breeding koi.....I have enbough to do with the
tropicals I breed and sell. What happens with the koi happens with
them. I intend to use large mnouth bass as a means of control to keep
from getting over run. The bass can eat the koi just as easy as they
can catch and eat bream......plus we also BBQ koi on the grill from
time to time, and its actually better than bream or bass is, and gives
catfish a run for the money as well.

A story I once got told by a friend of mine was they had some Japanese
guests coming to stay....the Japanese culturally give gifts to those
providing hospitality and having heard that his Mother was into her Koi
they decided this would be a great gift....they presented her with two
Koi wrapped in newspaper - beheaded and gutted and ready for
cooking....every culture has its different values.....I will eat
fish....but I'm not sure I could eat Clown Loaches yet they do provide a
staple diet in some countries.....

Selling on fish can be quite an issue - IME I never got the money to
compensate even for the cost of raising the tropicals...but then I never
did it seriously....and my kicks are from actually seeing the fish
breed....but then they are pets and I'm not into a commercial
venture.....If you were into breeding Koi then the whole thing would
take on a different slant and maybe remove the joy of the hobby of
actually keeping the creatures.....



All have been between 6 and 10 inches in length, and were raised at
the local Koi farm near Opp Alabama on the Pea River. They even threw
in a bunch of extra and wound up with approx 700 or so, and some of
those were quite larghe (12-18 inch size.) All given a once over as
they were acclimated form the farm water in my concrete burial vault
tanks I use for rearing up catfish and as QT tanks. ONce they wewre
acclimated they were netted and released in the pond. Muddying the
water has never been a problem with my other two ponds which also have
lots of koi in them, and this is mainly due to their depth.

This sort of bears out what I was told when I went up to the trout
fishery up in Scotland....it is a 5 acre mud pond but goes down to over
12 foot plus.....the water is clear even though the rainbow trout kick
up quite a lot of mess.....and this is all down to scalability - now if
I was to dig a mud pond in my garden which would be just a few hundred
gallons then cloudiness would be a very big issue.....


Pond is stil too new to let them forage as there is not enough natural
stuff there, but I usually always and intend to feed just the same. I
get feed at a local feed mill that mimicks Rangen Koi food and its
less than $8 for a 50# bag.......certainly better than not feeding or
feeding them catfish food or worse yet Special Kitty cat food as some
do. Its actual ornamental pond fish food for gf and koi without the
huge mark up.

I read a real interesting article in PFK this month - it's not on their
website yet so I'm not sure I can quote but might do so anyway (all go
out and buy PFK - you can get it in the US - does this cover me????)
The gist is that live foods produce better Koi - and that a diet of live
zooplankton produce fster growing and more marketable Koi than any
commercial diets or water enrichment programs - the original article was
in the Journal of Applied Ichthyology

Gill