Recent Entries

June 7, 2009
Things have settled down for me. With the help of the Piedmont Koi and Watergarden Society (PKWS) I managed to sell most of my koi back in May 2009. I needed to do this because I had a large number of fish in three different ponds and it was becoming quite a chore to take care of them. I had at least 100 koi, some big, some small, many show quality and many that were just average pond koi.

When it was all over I kept six of the nice koi and thought well that will be nice and certainly a lot easier to keep six than one hundred. These koi are in a 6000 gallon pond and that means more oxygen, more room to swim and exercise, less crowding so the potential for disease should be down.

However, there were also a few small koi we could not capture in the mud pond. Good or bad, these koi now have lots of room and have grown to about 8 inches and it turned out to be not three as I first thought but about seven. I will catch them and put them in the main pond. So already I am doubling the population. O well, I still like having. them around.

The reason I want them out of the mud pond is that I am growing water lilies in this pond and there is no circulation or filtering. As the fish get bigger they also root out the mud from the water lily containers which is why I call it a mud pond.

And Then I made an interesting discovery.

If you were one of the 85 people who attended our sale, you will recall a big-blue-round stock tank about eight feet across. In this tank we placed all the small koi that we would bag up separately and sell as a lot.

A couple of weeks after the sale, I looked in that tank which had rainwater in at and was only about 4 inches deep at the low end and saw a bunch of baby fry. It seems they spawned while waiting overnight to be bagged. Some of the fish are completely yellow and the rest are just dirty brown. I do not expect anything special from this spawning, but I am glad to have the small koi because I place them in all of my other plant tanks. I have about a dozen containers which I grow water lilies in, and I have found this is the best way to control the mosquitoes.

I will report later on how they are doing. I am excited to have some yamabuki fry.

Next Rain barrels.

McNeary’s Ponds and Aquatic Plants        3521 Monroe Road      Charlotte, NC 28205
Telephone 704-618-6214    E-Mail  jmcneary(removethis)@gmail.com
www.mcnearyspondsandaquaticplants.com