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18-05-2022, 07:53 AM #8113,000L fibreglassed raised pond with window
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davethefish1 Thanked / Liked this Post
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18-05-2022, 01:14 PM #82
So my early results of using the SH have been promising. I can't say the fish go mad for it as such, although they are a bit cagey anyway. I have two options with feeding them, throw it in and let the big mirror smash a load which gets all the other fish initially battling for it, or in a closed fist, hold a handful of aqua source and let the mirror take the lot so it spends 5 minutes chewing it all then feed the koi the SH but then they are a lot more cagey and spooky.
The mirror goes straight for the SH when its that or the aqua source on top freely, which is costly as she eats the most by far! The promising thing I have noticed is, like Dave, there is literally zero waste on the bottom. I think as well the improved temps would have made a difference, although the only waste there is, is the lighter coloured crap from the aqua source. The reason I know it is this is because it has been there all spring when I have been feeding them (probably feeding too much although have been sparingly feeding all spring).
This means of course the temps are helping, but it also means they are digesting a lot more of the SH than they are the aquasource. I am not feeding the Aquasource anymore other than to my mirror carp, but had been using small amount first to try and feed the mirror off a bit so the koi got the SH instead but stopped this since yesterday once the covers came off. So basically, I will probably still see the odd bit of crap from the mirror having aqua source, but only a week ago I was having to sweep loads of crap to the BD, now I don't have any.
Have the colours changed or anything as of yet? No. But I am also coming to the end of 2 weeks and 3 hits of Fluke treatment so the water quality is probably shite too, although the readings are fine with zero Ammonia, trace of Nitrite and 10ppm of Nitrate I think it was. Once I do a water change hopefully they will be even happier and benefit from the food more.
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18-05-2022, 02:26 PM #83
good to see you are seeing some difference too,
i'd though a few times about getting a mirror carp for my pond, but the food one of those eats is astronomical...
i'll be watching the colours to see they don't weaken too much as well.
or i'll have to get some colour food and cut it in.
i'm actually dialling the food back a bit, i'd been feeding 300g a day @ 21C - 22C (2% body weight estimate)
but they are starting to fill out a bit too much so i'm cutting back to 200g and see how they go from there.
it's all well and good talking about getting 3% body weight a day inside them,
but thats no good if they just get fat, and not convert it all into growth....
like you i'm coming (hopfully) to the end of a series of fluke treatments.
and though ammonia and nitrite are fine, my nitrate is up, and to me the water doesn't look 'good',
most probably due to the trickle in being off for over a month.
once i've finished this second lernex pro treatment, i'll be doing a fast trickle in plus RRO to clean up the water.
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18-05-2022, 02:36 PM #84
It is difficult to explain verbally, but we set periods of full feeding and try to stabilise the water quality while promoting maximum feeding, just as a professional breeder would feed in a mud pond.
I have not heard of many people taking out water testing kits to check the water quality because of the emphasis on this.
Most importantly, creating an environment that encourages KOI movement and interest in food at all times of the day increases digestion and aerobic bacteria help to stabilise water quality by making the water more mature.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4t_...&index=38&t=2s
In this list, which we have shown you several times, we have collected videos in which water quality stabilisation seems to be achieved through the adrenaline rush of the KOI while feeding its maximum amount in the middle and second half of the video.
This is because we want people to understand the atmosphere in which it is most important to keep the KOI moving.
There's some irrelevant footage interspersed along the way, but the further down you go, the more alert KOI are to their prey and the slower their feeding behaviour becomes.
Of course, water temperature has a lot to do with these things, but you all know that Canadian women have achieved near-ideal swimming and movement patterns even when the water temperature is around 20 degrees Celsius.
I agree with you that dog food should not be fed, but most of us Japanese who have some experience of keeping KOI will judge it better than a pond where the feeding mood is not enhanced throughout the pond, no matter how high quality the food is.
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18-05-2022, 02:52 PM #85
I know exactly what you mean, my water looks crap too. Needs a change and the UV on to clear the drum screen if anything. I love the mirror carp, she's a beast! But at the same time she makes such commotion when she feeds it spooks the koi which is annoying as it makes it hard to feed them by hand as every time you try a big fat mirror carp waddles in slurping the water like a vacuum and they all spook off the noise.
You'd hear mine feeding on the top the opposite end of the lake if she was being fished for!! I haven't a clue what she weighs, she was 9lb 2 years ago in March, but right now I would not be surprised if she was 15lb!
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davethefish1, Ajm Thanked / Liked this Post
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18-05-2022, 03:13 PM #86
your mirror sounds like my shiro, like a pacman at feeding time
if other fish get to the food first, she makes a big splash with her tail, spooking the other fish away, and then gets in first...
there was a youtube video i wached a while back, where a guy had a 40lb mirror in his pond grown up from a fingerling.
ended up rehomeing it in a carp lake....
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18-05-2022, 03:21 PM #87
Yep certainly would like to see your Shiro and my Mirror battle it out for a pellet or two It's funny the smaller Tosai seem to have a habit of ignoring the hundreds of pellets in space and try take them from the mouths of the bigger fish instead then spook when the big fish turn and slap them away!
I remember that video, was a 10k litre pond if I remember correctly or 1.5k gallons maybe! I will have to get a picture of her, she's looking plump!
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18-05-2022, 03:38 PM #88
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Ajm Thanked / Liked this Post
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18-05-2022, 04:48 PM #89
Will do not a problem im half way through a sack of osw might give the aquasource growth a blast or even sh but deffo not feeding sh colour 235 a sack I'm like dave my little darlings are munching 200 grm a day so won't be long before I have to stock up again will be watching dave and samp on sh especially samp as he's trading the aquasource for the sh see if it warrant the extra cash
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18-05-2022, 05:50 PM #90
Yeah it certainly isn't cheap. I am considering getting a 15k bag of growth to then mix 75/25 with the colour through the growth season. Seems mad to use so much food having only got through about 10-15k all last year but I guess I need to really feed them to get them big and we are blessed with this weather so far already. To put it in perspective I don't think the pond reached over 20 till about mid June last year, and have been over 18 for the past 2 weeks, with 20+ since yesterday!
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18-05-2022, 08:43 PM #91
It's funny I enjoy feeding them as much as possible if I could get half a kilo a day in them I would I look forward to emptying my food tub I can't wait until I can order more food
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18-05-2022, 08:46 PM #92Freddyboy the legend
"we are water keepers first"
Johnathan
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18-05-2022, 10:15 PM #93
I love feeding them too, amazing how much time goes when you do! I fed them before going out at 8 tonight. Went out at 7:30 and had to get ready before leaving for 7:55, when I came in and checked my phone it was 7:45! I thought I had only been out there 5 mins max!
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davethefish1, Ajm Thanked / Liked this Post
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20-05-2022, 07:04 PM #94
Great bought saki growth filled up the auto feeder and come home earlier and the screw holding the metal bar pulled through the hole ffks feeder in the pond and a whole hopper of swollen saki growth.. kept it but its like rich tea that have fallen in the tea
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20-05-2022, 07:05 PM #95Freddyboy the legend
"we are water keepers first"
Johnathan
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colincolin, Maddog1 Thanked / Liked this Post
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20-05-2022, 10:41 PM #96
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21-05-2022, 01:52 PM #97
What a pain! After taking the plunge with Saki Hikari too.
It took us a few years before trying it out because of the cost increase above what we have been using for years. I went through 1 x 15kg sack of Saki growth per week for 12 weeks feeding just our fast lane tanks. And, we found it does have a benefit. We don't feel that Saki Hikari is essential, and good results can be had without it. But, the benefit is sufficient for us to now offer it to our customers, and on the production side, we're feeding even more Growth this growing season, with the Balance too. Just on fast lane systems.
Sounds like you've managed to make a save with the food... but, if you needed a resupply to help you try the food out, we'd decant from the bulk bags we're using which would make it as economical as we could for you. Drop us a line if that would assist https://www.byerkoifarm.co.uk/pages/contact-usCo-founder and owner of Adam Byer Koi Farm (https://www.byerkoifarm.co.uk/collections/koi-for-sale)
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21-05-2022, 06:47 PM #98
Hi adam so what are the benefits you found with saki apart from the obvious growth on the fish
Also when you say your fast lane tanks are they fish your trying to get to the shop floor faster or are they the fish you are holding to grow to nisai or older
Also one last one do you feed your brood stock saki or your tried and trusted regular food
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samp09 Thanked / Liked this Post
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22-05-2022, 08:48 AM #99
Hi Whitey79, thank you for a great range of questions. And, it comes down to assessing whether it’s worth the £extra above our regular food; we feel it is, but just for the very best koi we produce. Here’s why, and the answers to your questions.
The quality (and health) of our koi is our top priority. We work hard on customer service too, but customers I’m afraid come a close second. After we’ve invested as much as we can in the brood stock, and then the time to find the right males / female pairings (sometimes years); we then look to see what else we can do to make the most of the highest quality koi that we have worked so hard to produce. Additionally, the ponds are well over filtered, the investments in our bore hole delivers really good quality water. Once you take the cost of all of that into account, a bit extra on the food is a small additional cost rather than a large one. We do have to watch the P&L as we are living off the farm, and we have to be very careful on the cost base. But, with the quality of our koi as the top priority, we have always invested in those very best ones - whether that’s pond space, or my time and, now a step up in the food.
I’ve been thinking about trialling Saki Hikari for a few years, and we were finally in a position to do so last summer. We started feeding our ake nisai Saki Growth last summer and I found the general condition of the koi improved from good to great within 2 weeks. This is subjective of course, and allowing for all the other husbandry factors, I'd call it at a roughly 20% improvement. That's shine, colour clarity and also enthusiasm for getting and staying on the food.
Then, over last winter in some tosai tanks we fed Saki Growth, there was a visible increase in growth rate once we'd changed over. That's again stripping out other factors like stocking density. We will have more data in around a year or so once we have more time with the food and have been able to run side by side trials. Also, for info, are these experiences were in heated systems at 23c.
We use the Saki Hikari foods only on the best quality koi on site; and they are the ones in the fast track systems. I’ve borrowed the term from the UK’s diplomatic service, where fast track is for the most talented of their recruits, and very hard to get in to. We breed off Japanese koi, but we are based in the UK and we are proud of that; so you’ll find we use local terminology and references where we can. Other examples are our Chagoi line based off a 105cm Otsuka Chagoi which we call Oakly, after the English Oak tree. And another is a type of doitsu ochiba with a bottom up pattern that we feel mimics an autumn scene from the Lake District; so that’s what we’ve called it out as. This is all about anchoring quality koi production with UK references. It’s a long journey, and it’s so difficult to convey how hard it is producing great koi. My job isn’t just to produce them, it’s also to enable our customers to be proud of having our koi in their pond and actually preferring them to imported Japanese koi. And in doing so, helping to change perceptions of locally produced koi and providing greater choice for the UK koi hobbyist, and helping to support UK aquaculture.
We do sell a range of the Saki Hikari foods commercially, and some of our customers are starting to try it. Our main interest currently is in it's use to make the most of the best few fish we have produced.
It's a really interesting ask about what we feed the brood fish. We keep them at ambient most of the time. We have been using our regular food on the brood fish -> wheatgerm / growth / tosai extra depending on the water temperature. The brood fish purpose is for breeding - I don't need to make them bigger or improve their quality. Once they’ve made the bar to enter our breeding programme, that’s it, they’re in. I do need healthy koi, and our regular food is fine for that. Our brood female Sharkey is a momotaro Kohaku that we bought at 73cm 5sai, and is now mid 90's; and that's all happened naturally just on our regular food. The range of regular foods we use and sell, is really good.
So, overall, it’s pull factors rather than push factors that have led us to trial and now use in special places on site the Saki Hikari range.
To conclude, as long as you’re on a reasonable food already, then what is essential is getting the general husbandry right including: pond set up, water quality, maintenance regime, parasite control, stocking density and all those things (that’s not a full list). Once those are in place, and when a hobbyist maybe wants to see if they can improve the overall condition of the koi; then first off, congratulations for reaching that type of space, and if you’re there, we can recommend trialling Saki Hikari and feel it’s very likely you’ll see a small but noticeable positive change.Co-founder and owner of Adam Byer Koi Farm (https://www.byerkoifarm.co.uk/collections/koi-for-sale)
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Ajm, colincolin, m00ny, davethefish1, perniciousviper, g mac, Whitey79, samp09, SplashJaguar, smartin, D’ster, hippo Thanked / Liked this Post
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22-05-2022, 09:22 AM #100
Brilliant post Adam thank you and its worth popping to theirs to see Oakly and Sharky very impressing fish
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Ajm Thanked / Liked this Post
The Daily pond temp thread
Yep , forecast snow here ! Hoping so more money to be made gritting lol Sent from my SM-S918B...