Thanks to a raccoon that dumped all my shelf plants last night I had to do a complete pond cleaning today. Since I had the pond vacuum out I cleaned the bottom of the whole pond, put in new filter mats, cleaned the pump, cleaned the skimmer filter and the bio filter, changed the activated carbon and flushed the water line. I topped it all off with a 50% water change and put in the spawning rope. The pond water temp is at 72°. Has been for a few days. When the pond was finally refilled I took a few minutes to actually sit down and enjoy it and I could see the koi behave like they wanted to spawn. Two would definitely gang up on one and shove it around a bit. This was about 6:30pm. I'm thinking the big water change, plus the warm water, plus it's just about time for love to be in the air anyway, I might have a spawn in the morning. Anybody else's koi in zone 5 lookin for love?
Koi Spawn?
Got up at the crack of dawn expecting to see a spawn. There was no spawn. There was instead a female northern pintail duck in the pond. Ponding is never - ever dull.
Nothing happening here. Another week or so and there should be some action. :-)
Still quite here too, just some "chasing" activity. Oh - and Helen the duck. She's been daily visitor. A knowledgable neighbor said she's a Mallard - Northern Pintail hybrid! We love her but I wish she would quit mowing off my new lotus shoots. Sigh.......
Snapple
I'd love to see pictures of Helen the duck.....
We have been having chasing activity at night. Nothing major yet, but we also have had uv light problems and new bulbs went into both lamps only yesterday, so visibility has not been as good as it should be.
Pond temps have been 72ish. Some of my fish are looking rather full, so I believe the eggs are coming in.
Pretty Koi!
Shoulda coulda woulda - Helen hasn't been back since I got new batteries for the camera! I have mixed feelings. She was neat to watch and seemed unusually unafraid of humans but she also 'dabbled' off all the new shoots on my Chawan Basu lotus. Darn duck!
No sign of a spawn.
Helen was probably adding 'fertilizer' to your pond too.
Indeed she did, and on the patio around the pond.
I've had no spawning at all this year, and the females have huge eggy bellies. I think our water got too hot too fast. June 1 they always say is sort of a trigger, so maybe soon?
Hope so! Nothing here either, but we have the opposite problem - too cold. After an initial warmup with air temps in the 80's and water
temps of about 72° it suddenly got unseasonably cold. Right now it's 54° for Pete's sake! The water temp is 68°. I've read in several places that spawning happens during a warmup after a cold spell. So, I'm just waiting for this miserable cold spell to end. According to the weather forecast that should be Friday or Saturday.
I've been reading up and artificial hand spawning, but am still a little too afraid to try it.
A) Although I'm sure the eggs are mature, it would be a shame for them not to be, and ruining everything just by rushing it...and B) It's not overly important for me to have more koi babies, BUT I also don't want the healthy of my ready to explode females to be diminished because they won't have their eggs released by the males.
Egg impaction is a killer. I found out the hard way. I don't have a lot of confidence in myself to hold a 2'+ fighting fish stable enough to express the eggs in the right way. My females are BIG! I 'd have to see a video or something before I'd try it. And then it would be a desperation attempt. This year I've got 12' of spawning rope in. I'm hoping that will get a thorough spawn.
Just got rid of most of the fry from last years spawning....... I can wait and as Snapple said, it's too cold here right now (I can't believe how cold it is)
^_^
snapple. Here is a youtube video of manual egg extraction. Not so bad...with a little mood music. Hope they can do it naturally.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7avOLxaGXI
I agree that it is too cold right now.
There are 2 fry left in my pond from last year, hopefully when there is a spawn those 2 will help eat all the eggs. I did purchase a minnow trap from Wally world last year to catch the fry. This year for sure, it will be in there early. Last year the fry were too big
for the trap.
This link has some interesting info.
http://www.nfkc.info/nfkconliine/Spawning%20of%20Koi.htm
BeaHive - you're amazing. Love is Love in any language isn't it! Except for the size issue, it looks quite doable. I'd need a BIG tub and maybe my DH's help in holding the fish. Catching is another issue. I bought a giant net last year. I've been netting them in the dark. They don't see the net coming. When I give shots I put a wet towel over their heads. It seems to calm them a little.
So who gets the wine? The fish or the assistant?
Great article! The YouTube video didn't have the right mood music. It was kind of like a 60's stewardess movie promo,lol. If my fish were 8 inches long, I guess I could do it that way, but many are over 20 inches, so I think I'd look like Captain Bligh wrestling a narwhal.
In my case it would definitely be the assistant that gets the wine. Some BEFORE I do it.
We had a long cold spell followed by a warm up today. I thought a spwan was imminent. Got up early and headed out to the pond. There was a lot of chasing, but the females aren't cooperating. Maybe tomorrow. This is sooooooooo frustrating! I want to get those eggs out and incubated in my smaller goldfish pond where I can protect them. Last year the koi ate every last egg. Aarrrrrrrrrrg!
This is so interesting!
I came here to read up on 'green' water and how to solve that problem.............now I have fish reproduction questions! lol
I have a small established water garden with a 1/2 dozen or so goldfish and 1 koi (used to have 2). I know little to nothing about fish and I pretty much let everyone do their own thing out there. I feed them in the summer and try to keep the filter changed. If I can keep the local hawks away and the neighbors dogs out....I'm happy.
It seems like every yr., I have a mess of baby goldfish and usually before they can even change color......they dissapear. Will the koi eat the babies?
They have plenty of places to hide, but that doesn't always save them.
I also have frogs and often wondered if they would eat small fish?
So when the females are about to spawn......the males will chase them? I did notice my koi chasing one of the goldfish a couple of weeks ago.....is that normal? From what I'm reading above....will the eggs float? And I would need to keep them seperate from the big guys till the babies are bigger? Sorry for all the newbie questions, but I have 1 beautiful fan tailed gold fish that I always wished would produce some babies. I thought I had one earlier this yr, but it seems to have dissapeared with the rest.
Thanks for any light you can shed here!
Peggy
No, koi don't eat other fish. Yes, frogs will eat small fish. Goldfish don't need any assistance in spawning. Believe me they do just fine. The eggs don't float. They stick to plants, the sides of pots, the sides of the pond, just about anything. The koi will eat any fish eggs it finds. The koi will also interbreed with the goldfish. As for dissappearing fish, the list is long, frogs, snakes, herons and raccoons are the basic culprits. Raccoons are the most common. Either a heron or a raccoon can literally wipe out a fish population in one go. The reason I talked about getting the eggs out is I have spawning ropes in the pond for the koi to deposit their eggs on. As soon as they're done spawning I'll take the ropes out and incubate the eggs in a section of a smaller goldfish pond that I have blocked off. Count your blessings that some of your goldies vanish. I went from 4 to over 100 in two years time, in a 2500 gal koi pond. I had to nearly drain the pond to catch them so I could get rid of them. I didn't want an over population and I didn't want them breeding with the koi. I love goldies, but I keep them confined to a 480 gal pond where they can frolic all by themselves. The over population makes good fertilizer, I'm sorry to say. My DH dispatches them quickly when I'm out of sight. There aren't enough neighbors with ponds to take any overflow. Pet stores don't want them. So, sadly it's the big pond in the sky.
or fishing bait....
Anywhoooo.....no spawning here in Florida, which leads me to believe it won't happen this year. The water will get too warm. We had hail (of all things) today, and I thought the chill added to the water may do something, but nope....
Snapple, what is your water temp?
Thanks so much Snapple.....very informative!
There have been yrs that I had a few too many gold fish and I took some over the hill to the big pond. That hasn't happened for a while and I just wondered what was going wrong.
I've only seen eggs one yr and there were a bazillion of them - I blamed it on the frogs and remember thinking ...if all of these hatch, there will be a problem. I scooped up several and sent them over the hill and it seemed the rest vanished. Something was eating real good that yr. lol!
Then there was the yr that all the resident toads ....not frogs....but toads decided to have a one day extravaganza in the water garden. I never heard so much singing and chirping and at one pt I counted about 13.
Water gardens sure provide good entertainment, but now I need to get my green water problem solved. I had a couple of trees cut down last fall and I'm getting more sun this yr. I figured it would be a problem, but I didn't think it would take this long to solve.
Thanks again,
Peggy
MM -
Judging from your posting, can I assume there are years where the koi do not spawn? I would think you would be ahead of all us being in a zone 9b. I know I have seen spawning anywhere from May to September and even have had a year where there seemed to be 2 spawnings.
I just checked my temp and at 8:31 am, it is 66.2.
Carolyn
Water temp here at 11:15 am is 71.1. A couple of the males are chasing the females. I have females sucking the sides of the pond and a bog plant basket to clean them for eggs. But they just won't spawn. Storms here tomorrow so it won't be tomorrow. My females are huge with eggs, just huge. Carolyn22, you give me hope that they'll get this thing over with eventually.
Snapple -
My fish spawned this morning.......
Carolyn
Good going. Maybe mine will soon.
Crazy4brugs -
Glad it's overwith. My one female was so huge - Now she can back to her 'girlish' figure again! ^_^
Oh Geeze, nothing here. What was your water temp, if you know?
Snapple
I can look when I get home - I was going to do that, but didn't have any glasses with me when I left the house. I know yesterday evening the water temperature was at 74 degrees. We did not get cool during the night - it was 62 (air temp) when I got up this morning, so I don't think the temps would have dropped a lot. I'll check the temp tonight and tomorrow morning and let you know.
Carolyn
This message was edited Jun 11, 2009 2:25 PM
I appreciate that. This is driving me nuts. It's raining here today - all day light drizzel.
Snapple
my water temps right now are 71 degrees. I'll let you know what the temp is in the morning. It started to drizzle this afternoon.....
Same temp here. Still misty drizzle. The kind of moisture that doesn't help the plants and spreads diseases.
Snapple
my water temps this morning are 69.6 degrees. I still have one female that looks egg bound - we will see what happens with her.......
Don't let that koi that looks egg bound go too long. I lost a great fish that way. I'm hoping tomorrow for a spawn here. It's supposed to warm up considerably today.
Carolyn: Congratulations on your spawn! As I am redoing the pond at this moment with a aerated bottom drain and an additional 2000 gallons I can only imagine what healthy fish and a spawn would be like. Maybe next year!
Linda
Snapple -
how long should I let her go? Perhaps I should put on some mood music and take a look at the video ???
Linda - can't wait to see pictures of your new pond and fish....
Carolyn22 - I really don't know, except that the gal who sells imported koi locally said not to wait at all if I suspected another egg bound female. The impacted eggs go "septic", cause an infection and the fish dies. Do you have access to any koi pro locally that can confirm that or give credible advice? If I have another egg bound fish I'm going to give it a try right away. It won't be easy. My females are all over 24" not including the tail.
I was just out at the pond. They all seem restless. They're really crusing around.