For several years we gave away new born koi to parents and grandparents. I believe we will be able to do that again this year.
Today is Saturday May 17th and the koi that I transferred over to the “Mud Pond” spawned last night. There will be 50,000 eggs and probably that many babies in a five days or so.
Last year the frogs that I can not keep out of the Mud pond gobbled them all up within a few weeks.. But this year things are different.
First of all here is the program. Baby koi can be raised in an aquarium successfully. Once they get a couple of inches long they can be moved to a pond. Generally, larger koi are not aggressive however it might be a good idea to move the baby koi to a little larger area outside before moving them into the main pond.
If you have children or grandchildren who would like to have some babies to raise out, I will have lots of them soon. You have to come here and I will scoop up a net full of small fry and place them in a plastic bag.
Free Baby Koi 2008 (continued from home page)
There is no charge, but at some point I will stop the give- away. Why do I do this? It is a good way to get people interested in the hobby, and it is educational to see what develops. Besides, I can not raise 50,000 koi and nature would eliminate most of them.
This year they will be mostly butterfly koi. I have mated a ginrin koi that I raised from scratch with a butterfly female yamabuki ogan. I used two males and the other one is Andy with the long eye brows and a black and yellow body. Andy also has very long plumage.
Please contact me by E-mail if you want to get some baby koi. The e-mail address is
jmcneary(removethis)@gmail.com
Update ... May 27th. I have lots of koi, but not the number I had hoped. Since the koi have spawned, they are very small but even now one can see that some of them are yellow. Others are dark but will turn some color as they get larger.
My offer still holds but these fish at the moment are about 1/2 an inch long although they vary in size.
July 26, 2008
Hundreds of baby koi have new homes now. The size varies a lot, but many of the fry are 1.5 inches long. The ones that have done best are those that are in what we refer to as a mud pond. Now this is not a mud pond in the true sense in raising koi, but in our case it is 30 by 10 by 1.5 feet deep. I have lots of plants in it and the water is turbid and yes muddy. I recycle water from the long pond and there is quite often a good bit of fish waste in it. in case you know about bead filters, every time I flush it the water comes out dirty. I let that settle for a day and them syphon or pump that back into the mud pond. The pond consequently ends up with lots of nutrient in it and that is good for the fish. As the koi get bigger I will have to adjust my program.
There are some frogs in the mud pond and probably 1000 baby koi. At some point the population drops drastically and I can not catch all the frogs that are in the pond.
I only plan to have this free give away of baby koi for about one more week. So by the forth of July, they will not be available.
It is interesting to me that I moved all of the water hyacinth with attached eggs to the 800 gallon blue tank. I thought I could keep the frogs and other predators out of that tank. I initially had many fry, but almost all are gone now. I had turned on the pump and had a lot of flow. There is a pump sock around the pump and all the fry were large enough so they would not be sucked into the pump.
In the past there have been Tobies that have eaten all the rest of the baby koi. A Toby is an aggressive fish that ends up being 50 times larger than the smaller fish and has gotten that way because it has eaten all the fry.
There is so much cover in the mud pond that there seems to be plenty of places to hide and the fish are growing pretty fast. I saw a Toby today that I will try to catch in the next day of two that was over 2 inches long.
July 12, 2008
About July 9th I decided to lower all the water in the 1000 gallon tank because the number of baby koi had really dropped. I pumped this into the mud pond and then after removing 3 rather large Tobies I filled it again from the main pond. I then netted up about 50 babies and placed them in the 1000 gallon container with water hyacinths.
Since I can net this pond I should be able to keep the frogs out.
July 13, 2008
Almost Free Koi
The baby koi that were free are now going for $1.00 apiece if I scoop them out or two dollars each if you hand pick the ones you want. As they get bigger, I will raise the price. There is a limit of 1 dozen at these prices.
October 13, 2008
Fall is here and these koi have grown to about four or five inches. I plan to sell them by early spring. Contact me if you are interested in any of them.
Koi Page
Koi for Sale
We do have koi for sale. Go to Koi for Sale
Each koi is photographed with details concerning each fish.
More on Koi
Are you interested in looking at photos of these fish as they swim and feed in their ponds. Click the following link.
We have been a hobby koi keeper for over twenty years. In our business we installed koi ponds, watergardens, raised tropical plants, etc.
Although I do not pretend to be an absolute authority, I have learned a few things over the years from observation, going to koi shows and just being very interested in the culture. On these pages I have placed photographs of some of the koi that we have for sale. In our business we tended to deal with beginner pond keepers and their wants and desires are quite a bit different than the Koi Kechi enthusiast. We have some very high value koi and quite a few that are just nice pond quality koi. We also have had fancy for Butterfly koi and have raised and sold a lot of this very special koi.
About the Photographs
You can purchase kid from a lot of places. How do you know that you will get what you see in the photograph? With digital photography one can make an average koi into a Grand Champion. On these pages, I have often posted more than one photo. The proper showing of the koi is head downward which is pretty hard to do. I believe the koi sees me and the camera and does not want to look at me so turns in the opposite direction. After taking lots of 10 mega bit photos I try to get one in the head downward position and usually I have to lighten up the photo. Essentially, this is all I do in terms of “touching up the photo.” I will fill in a background which is often left when rotating the picture.
Sometimes, the color does not appear to be to be true, and also certain parts of the fish are not shown in a single photograph. For this reason, I will often display other photos which tend to show the fish from more than one item. I also have found that when I photograph in daylight the colors are a little truer. I usually move the koi to the shade to try to get away from reflections on the water.
My goal is to give you a photo or few that show you what the fish really looks like. On each page I will also give you a description of the fish. I do not want to insult you but I will try to explain some basics since I will assume that many visitors will be nubies. (new koi keepers)
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