Hi All, I don't think I've ever seen this asked before.
When we first were going to create a pond we were at Lowes and
checking on possible liner materials. The clerk asked us if we were
building a koi pond. I said, that is one possibility, and.........came
home and looked up Koi. Had never heard the word before. We decided
on Koi as the books said goldfish usually only live an average of 6
years and koi can go 60 years or longer.

We still have one of the 2 first koi we bought....at Agway, in 1992.
He turned out to be a doitsu, or leather skinned, not scaled. He is
orange with black markings along his back. And his name is Cherrybomb
because he had a black mark on his head that looked like a cherrybomb
firecracker....the mark is gone for many years now, tho. He is about
20 inches long Our next oldest is a year or so younger, and we have 2
or 3 more that are at least 10 years old, all in the 20 - 25 inch
range. Short span in Koi years.

Interestingly enough all of the 'good' fish we have bought, some over
$100 only lived a short time. I suspect since we bought them at shows
that they were mishandled in transit to the shows. It is common for
mishandled fish to live six mos or so then mysteriously die, so I'm
told by experts. And what a shame, some of them were beauties.

Tell us about some of your babies.
Nanzi