The photos on the left hand side are the oyagoi (parent fish) of the new rebooted ki shusui project.
The first three in the line are all female shusui. The next three are all males: hariwake, midori, ogon.
The photos on the right hand side are F1 or first generation individuals from the spawn. Some of these young fish are blue koi with yellow lateral markings -- cannot call them anything but ki shusui.
This is quite rare to get ki shusui in the first generation cross. You will also see midori with a vivid blue zipper (dorsal scales). This is also highly unusual as generally, midori have brown or bronze zippers.
Some of the midori have gone golden over the summer. These koi have a very satiny look.
When this generation of koi is crossbred in 2015, we should get an even higher percentage of ki shusui.
The slide show is a fast forward story.
The fish arrived and quickly spawned in the quarantine tank -- which was unplanned in May of 2012.
See photo of eggs in the spawing media, the green plastic brush. Later, eggs in a scarf, that's what I used to transport the eggs to the lower pond (!). You'll find a picture of the lower pond behind the small red barn, and a picture of me putting the eggs in the water where they would hatch in five days.
Five months later, October 2012, we got to see the baby fish who were big and gorgeous. Of a batch of 350 fry who survived the unplanned spawn, I kept 250 tosai to grow on.
Still learning, I needed my baby fish to get bigger so that I could learn what to keep and what to cull in the next generation.
Below: slide show of the spawn and transfer of the eggs to the lower pond.
Next, a photo of my favorite of the F1 offspring. At five months the colors and markings were very well defined. On October 10, 2013, we saw how these fish look at a year-and-a-half.
So, far -- so good!
See the navigation bar and click on ki shusui harvest 2013 to see how the babies matured. ;)
