Quote:
Originally Posted by htismaqe
Our koi in the pond spawn 4 or 5 times a summer. It wears them out and pretty much destroys the pond vegetation but then again, some of them weight 20 pounds or so.
Even though these spawns produce hundreds of fry each, generally only a half dozen or so survive to 2 inches and until last year, we never had any survive to 4 inches or larger due to predation and winter.
We have two 4-inch babies that survived this winter and we're keeping them. I sold four 2-inch babies for $5 each last weekend. I also sold one fancy comet for $20 and a 5-pound shubunkin for $25.
And as far as these fish not being cheap, I have two offers for $100 on 16-inch koi and had a guy offer me $800 for one of my large platinums.
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Nice! I am hoping to sell the yearlings next season for a few dollars each. Our basement is unfinished so we are prepared to expand and would probably just utilize large tubs if we have enough reach a few inches in the next month.
Outdoors, we typically will see 10-12 survive the first winter, and once they do, they have typically made it for good. The top level of our pond is raised about 18 inches so we don't have to worry about predators. If a crane happened to fly over it would see the fish, but with the pond being raised it wouldn't be able to slowly approach it to hunt.
And that is one big shubunkin. I imagine your pond is at least 3,000 gallons or so? Makes for a lot of room for those comets and shubunkins to grow large and grow fast.