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Koi Breeding: Find Out 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 long and difficult but it is worth it all.
Selecting 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 those from the male parent.
Be sure to use only matured fish for breeding applications. 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 a young age. The female koi is ready to spawn if you observe it sucking at the edges of the pond, aiming 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 actually feel those areas to be rougher than normal. You can utilize 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 other fish while the females get more anxious. The net outcome 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 serious in koi breeding, you will have to use a controlled method. Put 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 weight. You can use ropes, artificial grasses, natural plants, vegetable sacking, and also cloth strips as spawning materials.
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 when there is foam on the water surface and the unique scent 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 may feed on the eggs.
Culling
The fry will break out of their eggshells within 5 to 7 days. They will keep on 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 also single color.
Culling is crucial in koi breeding. You need to reduce the numbers so the good quality fry can reach a decent size by the end of the season. If you don't cull, the unwanted koi will still fight with the good koi for food as well as 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 bigger, you can continue the selection procedure until you get only the ideal koi that you would like to keep or sell.
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