Things You Should Know About Koi Breeding
Koi breeding is hard if what you want is to produce high-quality fish for competition purposes. Before you can obtain a prize-winning koi fish, you will have to cull and discard several thousand fry. The koi breeding process is lengthy and difficult 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 research more on the kind of offspring you're likely to get. Just remember that the dominant genes are the ones from the male parent.
Be sure to use only adult fish for breeding purposes. The appropriate breeding age of the female is from 5 years forward as their eggs are larger and more fertile. Beware of breeding females younger than 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 place her eggs.
Male koi can start spawning upon reaching the age of two when small white nodules appear on the pectoral fins and gill plates. You can really feel those areas to be rougher than usual. You can use the younger males every two weeks but give a lengthier time interval for older males to maximize their fertility potential.
Spawning
Koi will naturally spawn in the early summer months. If you allow that to happen, however, the eggs will only be eaten by the some other fish while the females get more stressed. The net result will be offspring of bad quality. Moreover, a pond filled with eggs will harbor bad bacteria that will adversely affect the health of your koi population.
If you are sincere in koi breeding, you will have to use a controlled approach. Place the koi brooders in a different pond and be sure to hang spawning media from the walls of the pond. The female will need them to deposit her eggs which can be anywhere between 100,000 to 500,000 depending on her mass. You can use 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 induce spawning. If there are two or three males in the pond, they will crowd on her to simultaneously fertilize the eggs.
You will know that the Koi have spawned if there is foam on the water surface and the distinct smell of ammonia. By that time, you will need to transfer the female to another pond where she can regain her strength. Remove the males too; otherwise, they might feed on the eggs.
Culling
The fry will break 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 like missing fins, deformed mouths, colorless, or single color.
Culling is essential in koi breeding. You need to reduce the numbers so the great quality fry can reach 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 space. Culled fry are usually destroyed or fed to the other fish.
You can release your selected young koi in a mud pond that is very rich in natural food. As they grow larger, you can continue the selection process until you get only the best koi that you would like to keep or sell.
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