ray b
Koi Lover
Jun 13, 2004, 6:49 AM
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Koi eggs - about to hatch?
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Hi all,
 Great News, 3 of my female Koi spawned earlier this week!! (8th,9th and 10th June 04). However, this is the first time I've ever had a clutch of eggs to bring on and would really welcome some good advice please.
Unfortunately,  they spawned on to blanket weed and the only way that I could extract the eggs was to take them out in the weed.
I then put all the eggs and weed into a tank in my garage to wait and see what might happen. Some of them have now hatched and are free swimming, which is great. However, I still have loads of eggs left and I am wondering if my hatched fry or the rest of the eggs will be ok.
I have a few concerns......any help or advice you could give would be really appreciated
The Story so Far
1. Tuesday to Friday was lovely and warm and the temperature of the water in the tank stayed above 20c. I have kept the tank well aerated and have an under gravel filter in place. Because I only set the tank up on the quick because of having eggs, I put some mature Kaldnes filter medium from my nexus filter on the pond into the pipes with the air stones to try and get a quicker start on the filter bacteria. I have also been running a small internal power filter that I have set inside a cheap but brand new car washing sponge to try and stop the little fella’s getting sucked up. Will this be ok? I read in this forum that too much water movement can damage the fry. I have got it on slow running but it still moves the water round reasonably well.
2. I have been doing water changes every day (taking out 30% to 50% and putting in good quality water out of my pond), as I am worried about the blanket weed going off in the tank. Even so, unfortunately, by Friday night, the ammonia levels were up to between 1 and 1.5 so I did about an 80% water change. (I checked my pond water for ammonia levels at the same time as doing the tank and it doesn't even register so I thought that was good news). However, I am still concerned about the blanket weed going off and I would dearly love to pull it out but I have so many eggs left in it to hatch I dare not!
2. On Saturday morning (today), the water temperature in the tank had dropped to about 18c so I put in a heater and did another 80% water change. I set the heater to 22c and it climbed to 23/24 but thought this might be a bit warm and could make my ammonia problems worse so I have just turned it down a bit to try and get it nearer the 21c to 22c that I was trying to get in the first place! How warm can I go to get these eggs hatched so that I can remove all the blanket weed please, or will fluctuations in the temperature be harmful?
3. Looking closely at the eggs, many have small white nucleus's inside. They are not completely white, just a very small white spot inside and I am not sure if this is the fry developing or a a sign of infertile eggs, does anybody know please?
4. Just to miff me, there a lot of midge fly larvae in the blanket weed as well, another reason I'd like to get rid of the weed as soon as possible, once most of the eggs have hatched . Are the larvae bad for the fry or could they be a food source?
5. I have been unable to get any brine shrimp eggs or sea monkey kits locally so far  so I have been feeding "liquifry No.1" (for eggs layers) on the basis that it is a food that tropical fry appreciate. Does anybody know or has anyone used this food before please to let me know if this is ok? I did read on a site about feeding hardboiled egg yolk so I also put a small chunk of this in today as well.
As you can see, I am very new to the whole thing and have been relying on info from websites to help me research what I need to do.
As its my first time, I'm not holding up my hopes too much for this to be a very successful year but I'd really like to do my best by the little blighters if I can and would really love to hear from anyone that can help.
Thanks Guys
Ray
ray@money-minder.com
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Thanks for the feeding tip Gabriele. 
Re: [ray b] Koi eggs - about to hatch?
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