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Koi Breeding: Everything You Need To Know About It
Koi breeding is not easy if what you want is to make high-quality fish for competition reasons. Before you can have a prize-winning koi fish, you will have to cull and discard several thousand fry. The koi breeding process is long and hard but it is worth it all.
Choosing the Parents
Choose 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 sort of offspring you're most likely to get. Just remember that the dominant genes are those from the male parent.
Make sure to use only matured fish for breeding purposes. The ideal breeding age of the female is from 5 years forward as their eggs are larger and much more fertile. Watch out for breeding females under the age of 4 years old as your koi could lose their colors and patterns if bred at a young age. The female koi is ready to spawn if you find it sucking at the edges of the pond, trying to clear an area where she can place her eggs.
Male koi can begin spawning upon reaching the age of two as soon as small white nodules show up on the pectoral fins and gill plates. You can actually feel those parts to be rougher than normal. You can use the younger males every two weeks but allow a lengthier time interval for older males to make best use of their fertility potential.
Spawning
Koi will normally spawn in the early summer months. If you let that to happen, however, the eggs will only be eaten by the other fish while the females will be more anxious. The net result will be offspring of inferior quality. Moreover, a pond packed with eggs will harbor harmful bacteria that will negatively affect the health of your koi population.
If you are serious in koi breeding, you will need to use a controlled method. Place the koi brooders in a separate pond and be sure to hang spawning media from the sides of the pond. The female will have them to place her eggs which can be anywhere between 100,000 to 500,000 depending on her weight. You can make use of ropes, artificial grasses, natural plants, vegetable sacking, and also cloth strips as spawning material.
During courtship, the male chases the female and forces her towards the walls of the pond to initiate spawning. If there are two or even three males in the pond, they will group on her to simultaneously fertilize the eggs.
You will know that the Koi have spawned when there is foam on the surface of the water and the unique smell of ammonia. By then, you will need to transfer the female to a different pond where she can recover her strength. Take away the males too; otherwise, they may feed on the eggs.
Culling
The fry will get out of their eggshells within 5 to 7 days. They will continue growing and you can begin culling on the sixth week. Get rid of the baby koi with deformities such as lacking fins, deformed mouths, colorless, and single color.
Culling is crucial in koi breeding. You need to reduce the numbers so the good quality fry can get to a decent size by the end of the season. If you do not cull, the undesirable koi will still fight with the good koi for food and also space. Culled fry are normally 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 bigger, you can resume the selection procedure until you get only the best koi that you want to keep or sell.
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