2015 Upper Midwest Koi Show

Well it’s been a busy week with the UMKC koi show. I helped with set up a few days during the week and it was blazing hot inside the greenhouse facility. Great for losing some weight…. This year I was the scribe for the judges. What a great job! I learned so much about koi listening to them discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the koi and the comparisons. Pond Digger and I also hosted them for dinner and there was a lot of koi talk. We learned so much. What impressed us most was the judges’ commitment to keep on learning more about koi. Exhausted from the weekend activities….

Troy Head (AKJA judge) , me, Kevin Pham (Shinkokai judge).
Troy Head (AKJA judge) , me, Kevin Pham (Shinkokai judge).

The koi show also has koi vendors and we can never resist. While we need more koi like another hole in the head, we picked out a few from Koi Acres. The little koi seem so little. The trio are doing their best at hiding at the bottom of the tank. The two larger koi went back to Koi Acres since we are doing a little traveling and do not have a quarantine set up for them. I’ve been seeing a lot of terrible things that can happen to your koi if you fail to quarantine and allow a koi that might be harboring a new parasite into your existing pond. You could end up losing all of the koi. Knock on wood, we’ve been pretty lucky the last few years introducing koi with minimal to no quarantine. All dealers agree that even though they do a thorough job of quarantining, the hobbyist should still quarantine all new koi for at least three weeks. Some koi keepers will quarantine their new koi for months! Once again another patience issue but we’re going to try to follow this best practice.

Two goromo koi
Two goromo koi
Goshiki, kin ki utsuri  and a hariwake
Goshiki, kin ki utsuri and a hariwake

Too tired to write anymore, maybe tomorrow!