At the moment I am transfixed with the look of a Ki Bekko. Apparently they went out of fashion and are culled out by most breeders. I think they are lovely and hope to own one or two some day.
What is your "current" favorite fish type and why?
Culled, lol. My favorite is Shusui
I had two butterflies die today. I scoped them (well I didn't but my pond guy did and they had fungus and the parasite
chilodenella). Water changed the pond 30% and added more salt and oxygen. All my water levels were great-issues were most likely dormant in fish and with the pond heating up finally they emerged.
I just got two more koi yesterday, yes the bug bit me:) One is either a sanke or a showa. I love him, he has a red nose. Have to get a picture of him, he is still shy.
Also bought my first butterly. Orange and black, almost glows in the dark he has so much sparkle. Love his long barbs, lots of character.
Ordered another filter to handle my 4 koi and 4 goldfish. Does anyone know how to seam liners? Think I'll be making my pond bigger next year cause these little babies are growing like weeds.
Man you should have bought them from me! =[
Mothemole - What kind of fungus? I had Saprolegnia on one koi this spring for the second spring in a row. Last year I dipped the affected fish in potassium permanganate. This year I treated the whole pond with Microbelift Fungus treatment. Both worked well, but I was lucky and caught it real early, by the first week of April as soon as the pump was running and the water oxygenated.
The fish were dead and I took them to my pond person. I don't know the name of the fungus just that it was fungus and also "Don". Salted heavily and there have been no other problems (with the exception of my air pump just dying because it somehow managed to suck in rain water-and I just bought it and of course it was expensive. . . :() I had thing all covered all and was sure it was safe from the rain but somehow the rain got into it. Not happy . . .
"Don"???
I learned on either Koivet.com or Bonnie'e the nickname "DON" for chilodonella. It was used a few times by a few different people so I figured it was a common and much easier version to write and say for chilodonella. Anyway, fish doing better.
Stinks mole! Sorry about your fish. Glad you found out about it and everything seems ok. Sorry bout your air pump though.
Hadn't answered your thread yet, because I have such a hard time deciding on my favorite koi. I think Showa is my favorite. Of course I've been desiring a Yamabuki Ogon for soooo long now and I finally got one! So it's probably a tie between the too.
I love butterfly doitsu and butterfly gin rins.....they just float around the pond. Beautiful!
Some of my smaller 8-10 inchers at feeding time....
My ponds are built in layers in between my decks, which are all different layers too. Everytime I get a few days of free time, I dig another one. I sure wish I could get equipment into my back yard, but I'm in a subdivision with privacy fences, that have maybe 4 foot gate openings.
The big guy at the bottom is a doitsu scale, I'll forgive him for not being a butterfly because he's so darn sweet. He's about 26inches.
The butterfly you can only see the tail of (in every single picture, sheesh) is a lemon hariwake that's about 28inches. I love that one!
I also can't ever get a clear shot of my big mama (at the bottom) that is a gin rin white butterfly with a bright orange head. She's about 16inches, and so fat with eggs she can hardly swim.
The smaller yellow doitsu on the left (maybe 14-15 inches) is one of my favorites. It has a very bright lemon yellow color, and a very long tail.
Although he's under the water fall, and the pic isn't very clear, at least my big butterfly let me snap his picture.
MerryMary - love your fish-how big is your pond?
Very small...Like everyone who has ponds, you always wish you had made them bigger upon the first dig. So the best I can do is add more of them. I have them highly filtered, due to the fish load, which is beyond what it should be.
The larger pond in the back is only about 1,000 gallons. The other 2 are slightly smaller, but the one in the front has about 4ft x 3 ft of space left, where I'm going to expand it, which will add about 250 gallons. Because I have to hand dig them, I never go deeper than 3 feet. We don't have freezes here anyway, just frosts.
Love looking at your pond and fish MerryMary. You can tell it's a real healthy aquatic ecosystem. You have to put in a lot of work to get that kind of result.
I see a few of my fishies in there =p