"Sometimes not listening to conventional wisdom leads to seemingly impossible outcomes—like successfully breeding one the rarest of all koi, the Elusive Ki Shusui."
About Ki Shusui
This site is an introduction to the "elusive" one and a photoblog of our project that began in 2008 and continues to be a work in progress.
Our mission is to create a genetic line of ki shusui so that we can stabilize this beautiful variety— which has not been done before.
The showcases the Ki Shusui project history through our most recent harvest. We will show the hits, the misses, and the great successes of the spawns.
Enjoy the journey,
Maxine Paetro, Breeder
Awards
About the Breeder
When you ask the Japanese how things happened in breeding a new variety, they can’t explain it, but credit it to their passion to make it happen.
There was a small spring in the center of what became the front yard. The previous tenants had watered their heifers there, but I envisioned a pond, a reflecting pool that would mirror the sky, the sunsets, the amazing cloudscapes. One day I thought it would be better yet to have fish in this pond and the journey to ki shusui began. I joined Koiphen, social media for koi lovers. I learned about the different varieties of koi and I fell for a type called shusui.
Featured Videos
Here are three koi, two of which have been chosen for the controlled 2016 ki shusui spawn. The first fish is a strong-looking male. He doesn't have a lot of ki, but what he has is lemon-yellow or "atomic." The second fish is undetermined sex but has good qualities and will be kept in reserve. The third fish is a striking female and will be used in the spawn. All of these are first generation koi, bred in New York of Japanese parent.
This is Sweet Cheeks. She is female, one of the F1 siblings from the 2012 spawn. In 2014, she was considered one of the best, but over winter, her ki vanished and she was only a pretty blue shusui. This year, her ki is coming back and she is again, one of my best girls with beautiful conformation and skin, and clear lemon-yellow ki. Sweet Cheeks comes from Japanese parents, and was bred and hatched here in New York.
Featured Fish
Our featured koi is Thellonia, my pet, a home-bred Ki Asagi, who appeared as a result of the Ki Shusui Project. If ki shusui is rare, I have a feeling that ki asagi is rarer still!
Here’s the result of my detective work on this adorable koi.Before there was shusui, there was asagi. Asagi, like shusui, is a blue fish with red markings and one distinctive difference. Instead of having no scales, this variety is fully scaled and the blue scales are laid out across the back of this koi in a pattern referred to as “netting.” In fact, genetically, Asagi precedes shusui, in that shusui was bred from asagi. Thellonia is an asagi and, because her parents were part of the ki shusui project, one of her parents was probably a shusui, and the other parent was likely a yellow koi, a hariwake, or a midori, a green colored koi that comes from a cross between a shusui and that yellow or green-colored fish.
This is educated guessing, but this we know. Thellonia is an asagi with yellow markings on her face and fins. Other ki asagi have appeared lately in other ponds. So, logic tells me, over time and devotion to creating ki shusui, the genetics for this variety are in the parent fish in several of my ponds.
Lucky me.
