My koi
Posted by lorivertin on

Today we shuffled a few koi around to ensure all of our koi are happy. Chuck Norris is a nisai kohaku in the upper pond with the big girls. Chuck always looks a little put out and we thought adding a few koi closer to his size would make him happy. I decided to shift three shiro utsuris to the upper pond – Wild Bill, Sundance Kid and Roxie. Wild Bill and Sundance Kid were little Omosako shiro utsuri tosai that I purchased in January 2016 to watch how shiros develop.

Wild Bill started to with two weird dots on his head and in about two months was fading out.
Sundance Kid was starting to pale after two months but still had some sumi up.

Over the summer, the two koi became all white – the only way that I could tell them apart was by size.

Sundance came to the winter pool with no sumi but started developing some by December.
Wild Bill also came in all white but started developing some sumi on the head by December.

All winter in the cool water pool, the shiro utsuris continued to develop their sumi. Billy the Kid developed some more sumi on his face. Roxie did not develop any new sumi. Coming out of the winter pool – Sundance and Wild Bill have put on some length and plenty of sumi has come up. Both koi also have motoguru on their fins.

June 2017

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I also caught August the Ochiba because in the space of one week, August is darkening up for the summer. Last summer August basically disappeared in the pond due to his coloring. This koi will probably never go to the koi show because the warmer temperatures turn him brown and maroon (not very attractive).

August before Summer 2016
August the Ochiba on June 8, 2017
August the Ochiba on June 15, 2017

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The upper pond girls were a little unsettled when we added in the shiro utsuris but I’m sure they will be fine by morning. The pond is quite large and there is plenty of room for all of them. The lower pond mood actually seemed to improve without the three shiros.

I planned to put the kaede koi into the lower pond after he spent a few days in QT. However, this koi looked so sad in quarantine. This koi seemed very lonely in 2500 gallons and would come to the edge when he saw the pond builder or I and lurk around begging for company. We thought he was just begging for food but he just wanted some attention. Since we had used some broad spectrum on the koi, we decided to add him into the lower pond.

So everyone is in the pond now and we’ll have to control our impulse to buy more koi! Now we can concentrate on some more landscaping projects…