 |
Caring
for Your New Koi |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Amphibians Axolotls Caecilian Worm Chaco Toad Mud Puppies Newts General Newts Eastern Newts Golden Newts Mandarin Salamanders Suriname Toad Tadpoles Terrarium I Terrarium II USA Toads Water Dogs Misc. Toads Frogs Bull Clawed Dumpy Dwarf Fire-Belly Floating Green Tree Leopard Pac Man Pipa pipa Pyxie Red-Eyed Tree Tomato Misc Frogs Misc Frogs II Misc Frogs III Misc Frogs IV Misc Frogs V Animals
Birds Kids
at Pet Expo 5
Snakes Alive Sulcata
Grindal
Worms
Decorating
How
to Start
Sponge
Filters
Pet World Visit
|
 LA
PicAt a foot or so, koi start getting some great colors. Note the barbels.
Origins: Carp came from China. The Japanese gave carp their beautiful colors -- nishikigoi or fancy koi. USA added the long “butterfly” fins. Most affordable koi are US-reared. We get quite a few from Indonesia and Malaysia..
Appeal: Seeing a pool of adult koi impresses anyone (even non-fishkeepers) with their colors and grace in the water. Koi are also impressive at feeding time – actually rearing their snouts up out of the water to feed -- looking like a pack of submarines searching for the Bismarck.
Start Small: Few fish fans can afford to buy an adult SQ (Show Quality) koi. After a year or so, these guys start getting pricey. Little koi sell at much more affordable prices.
Size: Koi grow huge – as big as a river carp (they are still carp). For this reason, we recommend keeping them in outdoor ponds. They will bump into and break aquarium filter stems and heaters. Doitsu: Koi with large over-sized scales are called Doitsu by the Japanese. We call them German carp here in the Mississippi valley. Sprechen sie Deutsche? Doitsu equals Deutsche which equals German. Bieru equals Bier which equals beer. “Look for the cognates” as Herr Professor Vox used to say. End of our Japanese/German language lesson for today. Nicht wahr? Wintering: If your pool
is three to four feet deep, your koi will winter better outdoors.
If you bring yours inside, keep them as cool as possible.
Filter them well and feed them very little. City Regs: If you maintain a backyard pool deeper than 18 inches in most cities, you need a six-foot fence to keep kids out. Koi ponds attract kids from several blocks around. Threats: During the day, fish-eating birds and kids are the biggest threat to koi. At night, owls and raccoons pose the biggest threat. In all practicality, overfeeding and poor water quality present the biggest problems.
Space Requirements: If you can’t give them 50 to100 gallons of water per koi, stick to goldfish. Koi need lots of room to grow. They also like to jump out of aquariums and small ponds.
Foods: Last year (written in ’99), every company and their brother and sister got into the pond business. You won’t have any trouble finding good koi foods. We stock koi foods from Taiwan and Germany, as well as several USA koi foods. Yes, koi will eat Cheerios and bread. Koi also love any plants they find in their water -- especially duckweed (and, unhappily, including water lilies). Koi ignore water hyacinths. Well, sometimes they tear them up for the fun of it, but they usually won't eat them.
Mixers: Frogs and snails mix well. Goldfish sort of mix with koi but get elbowed out of the way at feeding time. Koi are very enthusiastic chow hounds. Spawning: Anytime your pond warms up 15o in the spring, your koi start wallowing in the shallows. See Carp for spawning details. Female koi spew eggs in unbelievable amounts. They probably eat most of them. Only a few hundred survive from each spawn (and that’s plenty). Fry Food:
Powdered fry food works fine.
Newly hatched brine shrimp work better.
Even if you feed your koi fry nothing, some will survive. Summary: Relaxing next to a pool of inquisitive koi, flipping them a pellet, enjoying their antics, sipping a lemonade … What’s not to like? LA
Justin
Tran, April 4, 2006
Tommie Eakins, Knoxville, TN, August 31, 2007
Hi, First off, kudos on having such a WONDERFUL website! I stumbled across it while googling possibilities for new fish. Your attention to detail and incredible amounts of knowledge are a great resource. The creative writing keeps things entertaining and enjoyable. Excellent job! I just wanted to point out an observation regarding the sentences "You need to wipe your tank front more often with comet goldfish. Add a Plecostomus to help keep your glass clean." on the page http:// www.aqualandpetsplus.com/Live%20Food,%20Goldfish.htm It is well documented (google will reveal many instances) that COMMON plecos tend to really enjoy sucking the slime coating off of common goldfish and comets. I don't know about Koi, though. I personally had to remove a 10 inch Pleco from a pair of foot long Comets (indoor) due to this problem. I kept noticing a scale missing from the comets here and there... could not for the life of me figure out what was going on, but one night as I happened to be passing by the tank a few minutes after lights out, I saw the pleco dart full speed at a comet and drill it in the side, followed by the unmistakable glimmer of two shiny scales floating free. I got on the magic internet, and sure enough, plenty of people have had the same problem. Apparently, it is the same problem as you described with livebearers -- the Pleco really likes the taste of the slime coating on the goldfish. I don't think they mean any harm, and I never experienced any long-term problems in the comets as a result (the scales grow back in a few weeks to a couple of months), but without action, I'm sure that the goldies would be much more susceptible to illness due to the raw spots on their sides. In fairness, there are some goldfish/pleco keepers who swear that they've never had a problem, and I don't doubt that, but there certainly are a number of us who have experienced this behavior. Interestingly, many goldfish owners report that bristlenose plecos and other similar (mainly smaller) species have not shown the same behavior. Beats me as to why, though. Just wanted to bring this to your attention! Hope all is well, A: Right you are. And hungry plecos are even more
likely to nail koi. I'm adding your comments to my comet page.
LA © 1999, © 2003, © 2004, © 2005 LA Productions
3600 Sixth Avenue Corner of Sixth & Euclid Avenues Des Moines, IA 50313 515 283-0300 |
Anabantids
Betta Leaf Betta Breed 1 Betta Breed II Betta Info Betta Housing Betta Pla Kat Choc Gourami Climbing Perch Gourami Pix Kiss. Gourami Osphronemus Pearl Gourami More Pearls Paradise Fish Snakehead Spawn Gourami T. trichopterus Catfish Banjo Bullheads Bull Sharks Channel Corydoras Cory Pics Electric Glass Hoplos Otocinclus Pangassius Pictus Plecostomus Pleco Bristle Pleco Costly I Pleco Costly II Pleco Costly III Pleco Costly IV Pleco Costly V Pleco Costly VI Pleco Costly VII Raphael Red-Tail Shovelnose Sun Synodontis Synodontis petricola Turushuki Catfish Upside-down USD Gold Flake Misc Catfish Misc Catfish II Misc Catfish III Misc Catfish IV Misc Catfish V Cichlids African I African II African III African IV Af. Furniture Amer. Small Amer. Med Amer. Large Angelfish I Angelfish II Angelfish III Angelfish IV More Angels Buttikoferi Chocolate Chocolate Spawning Cichlid Decor Cichlid Food Convicts Convicts 2 Convicts 3 Convicts 4 Dempseys More Dempseys Jack Dempsey Spawn Discus Dither Fish Flower Horn Green Terror Jaguar More Jaguars Jaguar Spawning
Jaguar Spawning II
Rainbowfish, Dwarf Neon
Koi III
Longear Sunfish
Misc Odd V Pond Info |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
LA
Pic
LA
Pic
LA
Pic
LA
Pic
LA
Pic
LA
Pic
LA
Pic
LA
Pic
LA
LA
Pic
LA
Pic
LA
Pic