Oh Baby! - Culling Day

We emptied the baby pond and caught all the babies. Had to decide which ones to keep over the winter and which ones to lose. We have put up the culls for sale at $1 apiece. Very inexpensive for koi, but it's the end of the season and they are unpredictable colors.

We estimate 600 healthy koi. Way more than we've ever seen. I guess we did a good job raising them over the summer. Maybe too good.

First we emptied half the water.





Chris was able to catch most of the babies in the 1/2 full pond, but we eventually emptied all the water to find the final few smart babies.



We collected the fish in plastic buckets and separated them into sell pile, lower pond, upper pond and aquarium piles. (Yes, we broke down and set up an aquarium for the winter. We ended up with 20 lucky babies wintering indoors. Currently they are very unhappy, but they'll get used to it.)





The picture above is the culls. They are for sale for $1 each.

The picture below are the keeps. They will be for sale in the Spring. Price will depend on their size and color.



It was a lot of work - about 6 hours of culling and getting everyone settled. But they are cute, aren't they??

Feeding time and a big surprise!

A sunny Saturday.


The babies come running (swimming?) for feeding time. Chris is feeding them store bought koi food that he has ground up in a blender to make it small enough for the fry.



This is one of the fish we will likely keep at least until next year. We named it Mimi. We are looking for more red and white in our pond, and this little sweetie fits the need.


After their koi food, they get their favorite dessert - hard boiled egg yolks. They devour it!!



A couple pictures of colors and sizes.


There he is!! A good picture of Big Red.


This is Momo. She is a keeper.


We got a big surprise this past week. We spotted a fish we thought had been captured by a critter!! We hadn't seen this fish since June. And there it is.....We had named it Nicho - which means two red spots. (I think!) But we've now renamed it, Moby. As in - the elusive white whale. This fish was spawned last year and somehow managed to remain hidden when we captured all of last year's babies. We missed it and it lived unseen for months. Kind of fun. It stays at the bottom and even thought it's white and large (6 or 7 inches) we still have to search to spot Moby.

They're getting big and getting names

An overview of the secondary pond. This pond has a lot of vegitation that gives plenty of hiding space for the fry.


The lilies are doing exceptionally well this year.


Hard to say how many we have but they are thriving.


This is Big Red. He is among the biggest of the fry. We are seeing probably 15 fish at this large size.



Big Red isn't the only one who has earned a name. We also have Big Yellow, Big Orange, Other Red, Pirate, Momo and Spot. We don't get creative with the names until we decide who stays and who goes. (Momo means tangarine in Japanese. To us it means, that fish with the orange spots.)

Getting bigger!

Unable to count - we have hundreds of healthy fry. They come running for food and love sitting on the surface in the sun.

You can see that we have a few that are much bigger than the others. We know at least 4 of this larger size.

This picture shows some colors. We see white, yellow, gold, red and black. Oh boy!

Six Weeks Checkup

Babies are looking good at 6 weeks. Lots of color as you can see. I added some flower and leaf pictures to try to give you scale. Most of the babies are at about 3/4 inch to 1 inch long. We saw one today that was significantly bigger than the rest. We are very happy to see lots of red heads and several with spots.










In the upper pond, it is a beautiful Summer day. Suki is enjoying some 'salad' as she eats hyacinth roots. And below are some pictures of the whole school. The red head in the middle is Fuji, our proud mother of nearly all the babies in the lower pond.

Got what we wanted!!

Looks like we got what we wanted. These fry are 4 weeks old and we can see hints of the colors to come. Looks like many of them will resemble their parents. We were looking for lots of red and black markings on a white fish.

We are feeding them freeze dried brine shrimp and hard boiled egg yolks. For now, an uncountable number. Lots and lots!

Hatched Babies and More Spawning !!

The eggs from Monday hatched!! Ichabod did not die in vain. His thousands of progeny are making their way now. Hope for a good crop!!!

In the meantime, two more females spawned. Our remaining male was involved, but so were three of the younger fish. We were able to identify three of our four year olds as male.

The neighbor asked, "how can you tell they spawned?" One way is we looked at the water.






The water is covered with foam. Also, the cattails are all broken from the violence. It's a pretty harsh process. The male pushes the female against the rocks to help release the eggs.

Right now, the fish are enjoying a feast of fresh eggs. We'll see how many fry survive.