Issue 243 Koi Carp magazine

PACKED WITH HINTS, TIPS AND ADVICE FOR HAPPY, HEALTHY KOI! ISSUE 238

THE WORLD'S BEST SELLING KOI MAGAZINE

THE HUMBLEST OF BEGINNINGS

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GENETICS

JULY/AUGUST 2015

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CONTENTS July/August 2015 8 GENETICS How they may influence the future of our koi.

36 HOW TO....

Add extra air to your pond in the months it is most needed.

32 KOI ESSENTIALS

Master the microscope and it’s no longer a guessing game!

...

ABOUT FACE

14 KOI BREEDER Think jumbo Yamabuki Ogon, think Izumiya.

It always amazes me how so often we completely get our priorities about face.

Hands up how many people, when starting out in the hobby, budgeted for a microscope, when working out the costs of owning koi? I would be surprised if more than 5% could legitimately raise their hands at this point.

How many had already worked out which koi they were going to buy, maybe already bought them and a friend’s looking after them, maybe before the pond was even built! I bet well over 75%.

As koi keepers we have a massive responsibility to look after the fish, keeping them happy and healthy. Every single koi keeper is going to experience health issues at some point or another, and diagnosing the problem and hence the cure is fundamental to successfully keeping koi. Early intervention can be so effective before any issue becomes out of control.

Mastering the microscope and having some knowledge of what to look for is, in my opinion as essential as having a water test kit. You would not pour treatments into your koi pond without knowing what the issues were and you can’t medicate for fish until you know the cause of the poor health.

You simply can’t keep koi successfully unless you have access to these basic tools.

46 REAL PONDS

There are as many different varieties of pond designs as there are koi varieties!

23 QUESTIONS & ANSWERS Your questions answered on any topic.

30 KOI HEALTH The breeding season adds another dimension and need to be extra vigilant when monitoring the health of our koi.

ALL YOUR FAVOURITE REGULARS: 54 MAKING RIPPLES All the latest news and

views.

59 CLUB LISTINGS Comprehensive list of koi clubs in the UK.

62 BKKS UPDATE The latest news from the British Koi Keepers Society.

68 KOI SERVICES DIRECTORY A regional guide to koi businesses around the UK.

THIS MONTH’S CONTRIBUTORS PAULA REYNOLDS

KEITH HOLMES

Mark Nuttall, editor Tel: 01929 459288 Email: mark@koi-carp.com Your comments welcome at www.koimag.co.uk

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CRAIG BALDWIN

MARTIN SYMONDS

STEVE GIBBINS

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GENETICS

THE HUMBLEST OF BEGININGS The chance application of genetic management techniques by Japan’s rice farmers developed our modern Koi. In the first of a two-part series, Craig Baldwin reviews the environmental and genetic factors that led to the genetics and how they may have an influence on the future of our prized Koi The Niigata prefecture was an isolated, mountainous region that suffered from

stocked in small pools for the traders’ families to consume.

several metres of snow cover for up to four months of year. However, despite these difficulties, the farmers of this prefecture were renowned for producing some of the finest quality and highly prized rice from the shallow paddies that were chiselled from the mountain sides.

Unfortunately, the rice based diet was responsible for a number of dietary deficiencies which led to a number of the rice farmers and their families suffering from a range of health problems. A small number of traders who visited the area to buy rice sent members of their families to live among these farmers as a means of securing their valuable cereal commodity.

Many of these traders were used to consuming a common species of freshwater fish, Cyprinis Carpio – the common carp – that inhabited the more productive lowland areas of Japan and decided to bring a small number of this extremely tolerant fish species along with them. Consuming these fish provided the amino acids or proteins that were lacking in a rice based diet and prevented the occurrence of many of these dietary based diseases.

The fish were packed in barrels of wet moss and transported for many days along the mountain tracks that led from the productive lowlands and into this mountainous region. Despite the harsh conditions, the carp survived and were

The rice farmers soon began to recognise the benefits of consuming carp and began to introduce carp into their shallow, muddy rice paddies. The fish thrived and rapidly began to reproduce and became an essential supplement of the diet of the region.

8 Koi Carp Magazine JULY/AUGUST2015

Amazing adaptability The amazing adaptability of carp meant that the farmers only had to introduce a small number of fish into each pool where they bred successfully and, inevitably, they soon began to interbreed with their some of their genetic relatives. For reasons we will look at later, this interbreeding soon led to an increase in the number of mutations within the resulting offspring. While many genetic mutations can be lethal, the most common mutations relating to carp is associated with their colour and generally results in a red or orange coloured fish.

During the late summer or autumn, when the ponds where

harvested, the normal coloured fish were retained and culled for eating whereas the brightly coloured or mutated fish were often re-introduced back into the pool to breed. The policy of returning the coloured (or mutated) fish and removing or killing the normal ‘dark’ coloured fish led to the pools slowly becoming populated with more and more mutated fish which, as they began to breed, led to a >

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