On 21 Jan 2007 15:14:40 -0800, "Phyllis and Jim"
wrote:


Tristan,

700 is amazing to me! They certainly won't be crowded. I am sure the
bass will help thin them out when they reproduce. Will you have
structure for them to hide in?
IN and around th epier piles, as well as the two mock (osage orange)
trees I have as bottom structure. Eventually there wil be lilys and
iris planted as one section (were yu can see the light white colored
substrate on north side, is considerably much shallower. Thay is so I
can plant certain non invasive aquatic plants like iris and lilys and
PIckerel Reed and Thalium or alligator rush.

I am interested in your local food at $8 for 50#. That is cheaper than
catfish food over here in MS. What is is called?

Its made at the local feed mill down the road from me all to spec as
laid out by Auburn University, so it meets requirements of ornamental
fish. Koi ponds as well as 4 ponds in the city of Montgomery as well
as the Zoo have substantial koi ponds, so this feed mill went with
making this feed as they have a market for it, and its cheaper than
buying from large sources like Purina or Nutrina and haivng it shipped
in. The feed mill has all the equipment and ingredieints, and the same
equipment used to make layer pellets for chickens or feed pellets for
cows is used to make pelleted feed for fish be it catfish or the
ornamental feed...its only a matter of switching over ingredieints for
what ever feed they are gonna run. Sometimes they run out other times
I can get it while its still warm in the bag.......Earlier it was
higher due to fuel prices as they use gas to fuel the mill as well as
for turcks etc to transport the ingredients. This past summer the feed
was 10 and 12 bucks a bag, now its down to 8 bucks, but I ususpect
that is because its better to sell it off at a lower price than have
it go stale or have ingredieints go stale until weather changes out
and folks start to feed again a in summer, but even at $10-12 a 50#
bag its still cheaper than even a 3# bag of food as sold in garden
centers.

You know, my sons would probably prefer to catch your bass than to eat
your koi...tho they would eat either, I suspect.

I intend to hold off as long as possible with adding any bass, but I
can get bass from the hatchery here (bout 20 miles away) in just
about any size I want to pay for. They wil sell a couple of nice 3 to
5 pounders or a truck load of fingerlings or a dozen 3/4-1 pounders. I
also have a freind that bass fishes every chance he gets and I have to
just about fight with him as he always wants to dump his catch in one
of my ponds. I figure if I let the koi alone until I start to notice
young fingerlings, I can then add the bass in the 3/4 pound size or
so, and they should keep the numbers in reason. None of the larger koi
owuld be harmed by them and there will more than l ikely always be a
couple of fingerlings that get to grow up past the point of becoming
food. They wil make up for any mortaility from predators etc. Anyway
700 fish is a lot of koi to have to go through so other than a few
bass probably next year or so, I should be in decent shape. I use a
cast net to catch any fish I go for as fishing is not one of my
desireable things to do unless its sal****er related.

Jim



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

They use pictures.... and probably hold-harmless contracts. ;-) ~ jan

Or, better. Microchipping is what they're doing now days.

OK they might hold pictures but then think of the whole logistics of
catching an individual fish without draining the pond
Gill

They seine the pond, and this is a yearly process for harvest. Koi, the
bigger they get the calmer and easier they are to handle. Apparently they
get use to it. If you ever have a chance to take in a koi show... it
becomes quite obvious which fish have been shown often. They're the ones
cruising around the holding tanks like nothing new is happening. The
novices are hiding as best they can, usually under the panning bowls.

I was stressed out the first time I had to catch one of my biggest koi. I
had to sell as she had just gotten too big for my modest ponds. I was so
surprised how easily she went in the net (koi sock), no thrashing, just a
gentle giant. She went to a pond 4 times bigger than what she was in, and
within 3-4 months took my breath away at how much she had grown. I'd had
her 11 years.

Later that year I had to start catching the smaller 4-6 inch koi, what
pitas they were to catch. They could jump the entire pond length, often
hitting me in the process. Thankfully no hits to the face, koi have been
known to cause a few bloody noses. ~ jan

Actually if yu make the pond so it can be netted with a seine net its
easy to retreive a fish in short order ifyu habve a helping hand
togive a hand. POnds made to be seine netted however are usually
shallower and have uniform bottoms which are suuited to usuing a net,
and totally void of any obstructions of structures. No need to drain
em.

Around thes eparts the routinely seine out a cat fish pond or tilapia
pond in a few hours time and have new fish added in all the same
day.....I bet the ponds the guy has are not all that large......and
may be in the area of perhaps a half acre or so for a given amount of
fish. After all they are under roof, or covered in netting for bird
predation control, and the main ingredieint is natural mud and waters.
Face it, how many ponders with a 5000 gal or so koi poind they spent
lots of money on in their yard be it formal or informal in design, is
gonna be satisfied with muddy water......NONE it goes aginast their
grain, but odds are even though they have their GC koi farmed out to
the "fish spa" they stil have decent koi in their backyard ponds....
One hting that is really debateable is koi do not belolng ina water
gsarden........so a dedicated koi keeper is not gonna have plants in
his/her pond....they may have another dedicated pond for water
gardening, but usually water gardens and koi keeping are two separate
functions to a dedicated koi keeper......Whats anothe rpond if you can
afford: a $50,000.00 koi, air fare to ship it to various events, money
to build a suuitbale pond at yur house and then pay to have it in a
koi spa and time to go to these shows and show yur fish.....mucho
money for sure, so a separate pond to have water plants in is small
change for most of those foks. Me....fish and plants are like pretzels
and beer..they go good togehter.

On , 21 Jan 2007 23:55:07 +0000, Gill Passman
wrote:

~ janj wrote:


They use pictures.... and probably hold-harmless contracts. ;-) ~ jan

OK they might hold pictures but then think of the whole logistics of
catching an individual fish without draining the pond in the first place
and stressing all of the others....I must say I don't blame Tristan not
to want to consider it....might be different if you are raising them in
a small pond or kiddy pool but then so would the breeder being doing
just that so there is no advantage to them to move them.....the fishery
in Scotland I go on about a bit....has two small grow out ponds (about
1/2 acre a piece) and from talking to the owner just moving the fish
indiscriminately is quite a task let alone if he was getting selective
in what he was attempting to catch....indeed the whole ecosystem of the
pond/lake environment would collapse if he needed to drain to be
selective....now I would guess if money is the big motivator and you are
talking Kois worth thousands then you might do it....but IMO it would
also be putting undue stress on the other Kois worth thousands just to
get one or two out.....so to do it you would need a mud pond of quite a
size dedicated to each customer......and then you are talking very big
bucks....

Gill



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

Gill Passman wrote:
BoyPete wrote:
Gill Passman wrote:

Mmm, and where might one get it?

You can PFK in any reasonably big Newsagents in the UK -
snip
Ooops, sorry, I didn't make myself clear. I was refering to zooplankton
--
ßôyþëtë

BoyPete wrote:

Ooops, sorry, I didn't make myself clear. I was refering to zooplankton

Try doing a google for it (UK only) I quickly looked and found one place
that supplies it:-

http://www.reefworks.co.uk/default.a...7&subpage=2317

Gill