tmg1963, I have a 15" Chagoi. She was the queen of my pond for the first 8 months my pond was in operation. Very social and active. Then, because of a friend's situation, I came into possession of two "monsters" ( 19" male bekko and a 23" female ogon). When I introduced these fish to my pond after 6 weeks of "Q", my Chagoi went into hiding. She went to the furthest places in the pond, rarely swam around with the others, and cut way back on eatting. Her behavior concerned me because she was exhibiting signs of illness (isolation)(food loss). Now three weeks on and she still spends some time away from the others, but she seems to be adjusting. Also it doesn't hurt that she gets special attention from me; aka extra food (she is the only one who will come right up to the side to take food). In your situation, give it time. LP

I have a bunch of new hybrids. I know they are hybrids bc I only had one red fantail gold fish and 1 orange and black koi in my pond. Oddly, out of the 25 new babies, now about 2 inches long, 3 are orange and the rest are a dark gray color. They are fat faced like the koi, but a lot of them have the tail like the gold fish. I am wondering if the dark gray ones will turn colors. And if the orange ones will change colors too. I decided to add two sarassas and another koi to add more color to the pond since the gray ones look like a swarming shadow in my pond.

You're right Ann. One spawn may produce 50,000 fry. They know from the breeding if the fry should be white or black (showa and shiro utsuri fry are black and get their colors later, most other varieties start out white) so they can start culling at 2 weeks discarding any offspring that isn't the right color. Then they cull again and again, until they have maybe 5000 left. Of those, most will still be pond grade but at least sellable. Some look pretty nice as 6" fish but do not have what it takes to go the distance, so they color them up really nicely with color enhancing feeds and export them. They get sold for as little as $10 each. The dealers here pay shipping and then mark them up (sometimes mark them WAY up) and sell them proudly as Japanese imports for up to $100. They may look great now, but will probably not look so great in a few years. the ones that the breeders see some potential....the ones with good patterns, good bodies, and deep beni (red) get put back into the mud ponds for a year. Then their price goes WAY up.....or sometimes when they are harvested their price goes down because what the breeder was looking for did not happen. So it is culled, exported and sold here as a nisai (2 year old). What a koi buyer has to keep in mind is ALL fish that are offered for sale were selected by the breeder to be culled because of something he did not like. The price depends on how close to perfect the fish is when it is culled. Although some things can't be seen in pictures (like skin quality and depth of beni), I'll be happy to look at your fish and tell you the good and bad about them. I am not a koi judge, but do have a pretty good eye.

Hi Drama, this is a loaded question. The question of how much to feed koi has been going on since koi keeping began. Let me give you a little background first. I know really, such a simple question. Koi growth and water quality are the two biggest areas. People will skip feeding their koi to retain good water quality, Also, people who want big koi will feed their fish more often. There was just an article in my local koi club magazine (MAKC) asking, are we starving our koi. Now people will say that a fish will only grow to its surrounding. However, if water quality is perfect and the fish has the genetics, it will grow big. So how is your water quality? How big is your pond? How big do you want your fish to grow? Also, with good water quality, expect your six fish to multiply. Now I believe in feeding my koi more than once per day. However I'm a R.N. and sometimes my schedule does not permit. I have yet to buy an auto feeder. There's a great series of Youtube videos by Andrewkoi. He touches on how you should mix your koi food. For instance, as the water warms I wont just switch my fish from wheat germ to a protein food. I will slowly introduce it. I have a zip lock bag, and slowly mix more protein into the mix as the weather warms. I never completely take out the wheat germ. As the weather cool, I mix more wheat germ into the mix until its all wheat germ. Now I mix other types of food in as well, silkworm pellets, freeze dried krill, etc.. As far as the Blue Ridge pellets go, I don't believe they are bad. However, if you see floating poop on the water stop feeding them it. Sorry for the long response...I hope this helps.. Craig