Koi Breeding: Learn More About It
Koi breeding is difficult if what you want is to make high-quality fish for competition purposes. Before you can have a prize-winning koi fish, you will have to cull and discard several thousand fry. The koi breeding process is lengthy and hard but it is all worth it.
Choosing the Parents
Select the male and female from the exact same variety you want to reproduce. If you wish to cross-breed, choose varieties carefully and study more on the kind of offspring you're most likely to get. Just remember that the dominant genes are the ones from the male parent.
Make sure to use only adult fish for breeding purposes. The suitable breeding age of the female is from 5 years forward as their eggs are larger and much more fertile. Beware of breeding females under the age of 4 years old as your koi could lose their colors and patterns if bred at an early age. The female koi is ready to spawn if you find it sucking at the sides of the pond, trying to clear a place where she can put her eggs.
Male koi can begin spawning upon reaching the age of two when small white nodules show up on the pectoral fins and gill plates. You can really feel those parts to be rougher than usual. You can use the younger males every two weeks but give a lengthier time interval for older males to make best use of their fertility potential.
Spawning
Koi will naturally spawn in the early summer months. If you let that to happen, however, the eggs will only be eaten by the some other fish while the females will be more stressed. The net result will be offspring of bad quality. Moreover, a pond packed with eggs will harbor bad bacteria that will negatively affect the health of your koi population.
If you are sincere in koi breeding, you will need to use a controlled approach. Place the koi brooders in a different pond and be sure to hang spawning media from the sides of the pond. The female will need them to place her eggs which can be anywhere between 100,000 to 500,000 depending on her mass. You can make use of ropes, artificial grasses, natural plants, vegetable sacking, or cloth strips as spawning material.
During courtship, the male pursues the female and forces her towards the walls of the pond to initiate spawning. If there are two or three males in the pond, they will group on her to simultaneously fertilize the eggs.
You will know that the Koi have spawned if there is foam on the surface of the water and the distinct smell of ammonia. By that time, you will need to transfer the female to a different pond where she can regain her strength. Take away the males too; otherwise, they could feed on the eggs.
Culling
The fry will get out of their eggshells in 5 to 7 days. They will continue growing and you can start culling on the sixth week. Get rid of the baby koi with deformities such as missing fins, deformed mouths, colorless, and single color.
Culling is crucial in koi breeding. You need to reduce the numbers so the great quality fry can get to a reasonable size by the end of the season. If you do not cull, the unwanted koi will still fight with the good koi for food and also space. Culled fry are usually destroyed or fed to the other fish.
You can release your chosen young koi in a mud pond that is very rich in natural food. As they grow larger, you can resume the selection process until you get only the best koi that you would like to keep or sell.
All You Need To Know When Caring For Your Koi Fish
Many pond owners around the world choose koi for pond fish. It's because koi are colorful and have interesting personalities. In addition, Koi fish tend to live long, from 25 to 35 years. It has even been reported that the koi fish's ancestral predecessors lived as long as 200 hundred years.
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