How large/old before they start to mate?

[lindsayanng]

I ask this because I swear I saw my two fish "doing it" or some form of it since i know the male fertilizes after the eggs are laid.

Anyways.. I have a 10" butterfly white koi who has been in our pond for 2 weeks or so now.. and then I have a 3-4" white koi that has been in the pond for about 3 weeks.. The little guy has been infatuated with the butterfly.. He (i think) circles around her and is always darting around in front of her. He never gets close enough to touch or bump into her.

Then today I am not sure what I saw.. The large fish was just sitting in the pond not really moving.. I looked down and the little guy was on it's side under the fish going back and forth. It was SOO weird.. It almost looked like he was flashing in slow motion on the bigger fish.

now, I call the butterfly a "her" but I do not know the sexes of either fish for sure..

I was just wondering if this little guy is too young and this was just some weird coincidence or what.

 

[DrDave]

10" seems a bit young for this. Did you find any eggs? They are not hard to spot if she did spawn. They look like tapioca and there will be thousands of them.

 

[lindsayanng]

I did not see any eggs.. i was thinking MAYBE they were just doing some type of mating dance?

 

[luvmyasagis]

You will also be able to tell by the smell. If you ever went fishing and got to the lake only to smell that fish smell then you will know what I mean.I think the bigger they get the worse the smell LOL.

 

[DrDave]

Juvinille foreplay, weren't we all guilty of that? LOL

 

[DrCase]

I dont doubt it..Fish will be fish.

 

[lindsayanng]

I heard about the smell.> GROSS.. but cool. I would love to see eggs and babies.. although i'm not sure if i owuld have time to keep them alive..

LIke i said, the male (i think) is only 4" and the female (again i think) is only 10" but they were and STILL ARE doing some weird dance.. They are always together too.. but that could be becase there are only 2 koi in the pond and 1 fan tail goldfish.. the others are surviving feeders

 

[patty]

I have a 5000 gallon pond and noticed several babies two days ago. They look like eyelashes with eyes! Two years ago my fish had babies and about 100 of them survived. I am hoping for these to make it. I had a burst of string algea and they are all hiding in it. So right now . . . I can live with the string algea on the sides!!

 

[DrDave]

Your adult Koi used the string algae to lay their eggs. mine do it every year. They usually eat all the algae on the edge in the weeks after the hatch, so add some floating plants for the babies to hide.

 

[koiguy1969]

my koi spawned this year and she was only 8" the males were 12"+