koi fry

[kraig1]

Hi, I thought I would have a go a rearing some koi fry so I bought some. I have had them about 5 or 6 weeks now and all has been fine hardly lost any, Water quality is ok, about a week ago I started loosing fish at about 5 or 6 a day. I scoop 1 dead one out go back 5 mins later and another is dead. Has anyone any idea what might be causing this or is it normal.

regards

 

[Koigal50]

Need more information.


What type of system are you keeping them in? What maintenance practices are you using? How many fry are you trying to keep in it?

 

[kraig1]

hi, they are in a 2x1x1 meter raised pond, I check the water every other day and they don't change, nitrate is between 0 & 10, nitrite is between 0 & 0.1, ph is 8.2 and amonia is 0. They are fed when all the othe food has ben eaten. I started with 300 but I think there are only about 200 left.

cheers

craig

 

[kraig1]

7 more have died since i wrote the first post.

 

[Koigal50]

How many gallons is that? How big are the fry. 1-2-3 Inches? The fry in that 100 gallon tub I'm keeping are only about 1/2 - 1 inch. When I see 1 1/2 - 2 inch I transfer it. I try to do a 80% water change every two weeks regardless. Do you have some aeration in there, that's necessary it you don't have the plants like I do.

did you lose 100 to death or are they eating each other? Some death does occur, but clean the system when it starts happening. It all depends on how many, how big they are and how much room you have, Regardless of tests results, clean it and make sure it's oxygenated.

 

[kraig1]

it's about 450 gallons, i have an air pump plus a pump and filter. i did a water change when they started dying but it didn't improve the situation. they are 1 - 1 1/2 inch.

 

[Koigal50]

Tank sounds big enough for now if you only have 200 left. How long have you had them. What foods are you using?
I use decapsulated brine shrimp, freezed dried planton, color flake food. planton and flake food have to be grind to powder still.
put the powder in a little jar of water and shake it up and poor around perimeter. this way the food will spread into the tank and give all of the chances to get some, not just the aggressive ones on top.

Just hang in there. 200 still plenty. I only kept 50 - 75 of my grow outs. Still have all of Mike's babies and about 40 made it on their own in the main pond. Think next week I'll go in there and try to catch them and separate keepers from sellers.

 

[kraig1]

thanks for your help, all the best.
craig

 

[Koigal50]

Take some pictures so we can watch the progress.

 

[Koilady]

This brings up so many memories for me. When we had our first Koi spawn, I brought a bunch of eggs inside the house to rear them, only to end up with about 13 Koi out of a spawn of about 1,000 eggs. I know now that the problems was. We were just new to the hobby and I didn't realize the importance of good water quality and water changes when raising these beautiful creatures. Also, live foods are so very important. We raised our own daphnia outside and because we are also in the tropical fish hobby, we have lots of brine shrimp eggs which we hatch and feed to the babies when they become free swimming.
We also get the best food available and grind it up. We also grind up spirulina flakes, worm flakes, freeze dried tubifex worm along with some veggie flakes from the tropical fish hobby. Our babies do very well and grow quickly. We used to have 14 ponds in our yard. We imported our Koi from Niigata Japan and our Orandas from China and Singapore. We learned so much about breeding this way. Of course, you can learn on any fish that are breeding in your pond.

Your's Koily, Lorraine