After much debate, we caught our blue pregnant Shubby:-)

[capewind]

Hubby and I have been going back and forth about WHAT to use our now empty 750 gallon QT for... do we move the babies we already have going, or bring the shubbies in to spawn... The Shubbs won

I tried to get pics of them as they were going into QT but the camera was acting up, BUT, I did get a couple of decent pics of the blue/FAT girl

The first 2 pics are the pregnant girl... The third pic is one of the hopeful dads... The other pics didnt come out:-( Maybe once they settle into the QT I can try again for better pics...

 

[addy1]

Pretty, I like those colors, good luck on spawning and babies. Did you put in spawning mops? or somewhere for the eggs to be happy?

 

[don't ask]

yep pretty fish... hope some of the babies are even bluer

 

[fishin4cars]

Be sure and get something for them to lay the eggs on. Shubbies can and do scatter eggs off and on. They may lay a few hundred one week and again a few weeks later. Koi only breed once per season. Or at least I should say Most females only breed once per season. But there are excepetions. I can't tell you how many times I have removed four or five adult goldfsih out of a tank and getting ready to add new fsi to the tank only to find a batch of fry swimming around 4-5 days later.
The blue color choice is nice. Personally I don't care for the blue variaty as much. It's plain personal taste. Nothing against them. But I do lke ones that are really blue with pepper black and DEEP red. I have two that fit the desciption of what I like best but they are both short finned, I like long fin. I also have a really cool white with pepper black spots that has a tiny red spot. It's again short fin but a nice female that I would like to see what she might produce. Good luck, I hope to be following this thread and see many new additions!

 

[capewind]

Oh yes, we gave her spawning mops Actually, put all five that I still have in there, but after a couple of good cleanings, some are starting to fall apart. Nothing fancy, I make the yarn ones. Wrap yarn around a tote cover about 100 times for a giant pom pom/tassel. Not fancy, but it works

I like most species of fish. Grew up with the tropicals, did marine (til Hurricane Bob turned it upside down), and of course like pond fish too Except for maybe Hippo Tangs and a few cichlids, I dont often see much for blue on fish, thus my "thing" for "blue". We have a total of 6 kio with blue... 2 are nicely marked Shusui's but still small (Shubunkin sized, maybe 6-8"), and one Shusui (I may be miss calling him, he is all blue with a cream belly and fins) who in 2 years has only grown to about 8", and then 3 blue butterflies (14-20"), but they are really light...

We have other shubs that I like their colors too, but they just dont photograph (with my camera anyways) well. One is a really deep metallic blue, that its back is almost covered in black spots... and another who is silver blue on the sides, red on top, and nearly covered in black with really black fins. For right now, we moved all 8 to the QT. It was a lot of work to get them out of the pond (hubby had to go swimming), so really not an option to say I want THAT one and THAT one, and THAT one... I really dont know how many other fish are in the main pond... maybe 40-45 koi? It became Shub to your left kind of thing LOL.

I need to look up how often the Shubs can spawn. This preg girl has looked like she has swallowed a ping pong ball for a few weeks now, and just keeps getting bigger. We only have a total of 8 Shubs, hubby says he thinks 4 of them are boys. I am not so sure. What I do know is about every 10-14 days, we are pulling 1-3 Shub babies in the quarter inch range out of the pond.

Anyways, I tried to attached a pic of her with a couple of the mops. You can tell that when hubby refilled the QT it came from the pond.. dang pump sucked the algae off the outside liner. Hopefully by tonight the QT pumps can suck all the algae out of the water, so I dont have to move "green mops" to the holding pool with any eggs. I know we need to shut down at least some of the pumps (forgot last time, and retrieved most of the eggs out of the filter - I still cant believe they hatched LOL)

 

[Fishylove]

Pretty!! I keep looking for a blue shubby here but no such luck But I WILL find one! lol

 

[capewind]

We found the darker ones at Petsmart, late in 2010, and a couple of weeks later, found the bluer ones at another store... at the time, they were barely 2". We shouldnt have bought any of them, as we were then over crowded for the water volume, but hubby just added more filtration and we kept the water quality in check. Not sure if that slowed their growth or not. The smallest may be 6-7" now, and the largest may be closer to 9". I havent seen any blue ones since (except in other people's pictures).

This year especially, in any of the local stores, they havent had much in any of the species I like. My "budget" is set on "pond quality" priced fish, and I am okay with that, but this years available stock of pond quality makes my existing pond quality fish look like show quality in comparision. Maybe next year will be better.