On Sun, 21 Jan 2007 21:54:26 +0000, Gill Passman
wrote:

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.....

Well I just got rid of a clown fish and if it wa just a tad bit bigger
it woul dhave become a fish stick a it was nothing but trouble. I do
not have any clown loaches though. I had given some thought into
making a few smaller ponds allconnected tothe larger ones that use
water piped into and flowed from the larger pond. Idea being that
serious koi folks could "rent" space in these ponds and keep their koi
in them like say over the winter. Mud ponds actually do a kois color a
justice, more than can be done in prisitine waters and adding koi
clay, which is abundant in this areas soils naturally......But being
responsible for those high dollar fish is not something I woul dlike
to take responsibility for. There is a fellow in Virginia thsat houses
and keeps high dollar koi for foks that show in a totally fenced in
and enclosed natural mud pond, and when they decide to show the fish,
he pulls the pond, gets their fish, packs it up and ships it tothe
show. After the show is over the fish gets shipped back to his mud
pond. Just too much responsibility to do that to be enjoyable, as I
am not into showing as much as just seeing mine in a natural way.
Just do not knock grilled / baked koi until you try it.

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.....

Well I am not a"voyuer" of fish but with the wife and her multitude
of water featuyres that range form single 20 gal half barrels to 6
half barrels to 225 gal preforms that she has all around, and knowing
they are all to small for koi, not wanting to build a larger liner
pond tohave koi since we have large mud ponds with koi, we had
considered Goldies, but there is more money in tropicals than goldies
in this region, and considering we can keep most all tropicals in a
heavilly panated water feature outside here for about 9 months most
years its a natural thing to do. I can sell all the tropicals I can
breed. Its a lot neater IMHO to see a planted half barrel with yellow
cichlids in it or a 225 gal preform full of gourami than the same
device qwith half a dozen goldies. Tropicals do fantastic here since
water in smaller features get hotter than goldies really like. I
rarely ever feed them when outside, they look and grow much better,
and it has really eliminated most mosquito problems a well. So for 2
or 3 months I bring in the brood stock and house em inthe barn inthe
banks of tanks we have setup. The banks of tanks came from a Petco
store that remodeld and they wanted the tanks, lights stand pumps etc
etc ect all hauled off and gone.


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.....

Sort of like a PICO or NANO compared toa larger setup. But outside
smaller bodies of water are a biug hassle whenit comes to heat / cold
and evaporation, and just a little bit of stirring up makes a muddy
mess.......so far ewven though those 700+ koi are all looking around
for food, and eating submerged grasses etc that were covered over when
it filled up muddying of thew water has not been a problem. I get more
muddy water from rain in some spokjts that are not grown iun as heavy
with ground cover, but even that settles out in a few hours time.


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

Well if a person fertilizes a natural pond it gorws all organisms in
the food chain. However fertilizer adds to algae blooms but there is
stil a large percentage of "live " stuff that is going to occur
without fertilizer, so the key is not to exceed the source quanity.
Koi all love live foods, and those live things incklude may flys and a
multitude of aquatic stuff. I only supplement with man made stuff.
Even in my other ponds sometimes it hartd toget koi to come up for
food I throw in as they are too busy getting the good natural stuff.
So once this pond matures suplemental feeding is all that they wil get
for the most part. ONce they start to spawn, I will add some 3/4 to 1
pound sized florida hybrid bass to handle the population control. I
may commit to allowing koi to spawn in one of the other ponds at a
later date but for now I think the 700 plus is more than enough and
I'll just have to see what kind of predation and mortality rates I
have.......

Gill



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I forgot more about ponds and koi than I'll ever know!