Yes, there is impulse koi shopping. Actually I think most of my koi purchases are on the impulsive side. Pretty koi are hard to resist and I always love some of the more colorful koi. In this case, Kevin Pham of Genkikoi had been posting a lot of videos of new koi for purchase. Lots of koi from the fall harvests in Japan are being shipped back and up for sale. While it’s nice to look at your koi in person before you buy, if you trust your koi dealer, you can purchase with confidence.

The pond digger and I had been viewing a lot of the Genkikoi video clips and last week we saw two videos with some very colorful koi. Many koi keepers thoughtfully select koi based on a variety that they want…we select koi based on what we think would look pretty in the pond. The ginrin ki utsuri is a flashy, yellow and black koi…the aka matsuba appears to be a nice, deep red (the same color as the Red Devil in Scream Queens if you’re watching that series on TV). We think these two koi will look nice with our current koi next year in the upper pond. The two koi will not join the koi that are wintering in the garage swimming pool. Instead, they will be spending this winter in much warmer climate, San Jose, under the watchful eye and care of Kevin Pham. Can’t wait to see them late April 2016.

Meanwhile back in Minnesota the koi are still swimming around and looking hungry. We moved the aerator right on top of the drain which helps move all the wastes into the skimmer and the filter. I’ve sewn the insulation pieces together with some fishing line to keep them from floating around and blocking the skimmer. The water parameters are always a little struggle. We had hoped that running the bead filter off of the upper pond this fall would ensure that the bacteria was established and working to keep the nitrites down – not so 🙁 We are doing extra water changes in addition to our continuous drip. Hopefully our water parameters will improve soon.