The Elusive Ki Shusui

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.
Shusui means “Autumn Sunset,” because it has pale blue to white color skin with red bands on its sides, rising up toward the dorsal ridge and the double row of indigo blue scales. So, it loosely resembles an autumn sunset. I bought several shusui, and one I called Rosie really lit me up. And at about that time, 2008-9, I found out that there was a yellow shusui, called ki shusui. For many reasons, this is a difficult variety to achieve, and the few available for purchase were not picture perfect.
I guess I fell hard for the ki shusui, and because there were none to be had, I decided to try to breed my own. I put in more ponds and soon I had a million gallons of fresh, aerated water, and some shusui and other promising fish to cross them with. I was incredibly lucky. Offspring from those first spawns produced the lovely fish I desired, the one known as “the elusive ki shusui.”