hello .I tend to agree with Sue .I have just bought a fish from a friend ,the fish is six years old ,lenth is 66cm and she weighs 4.5kg .His pond is only 5000L and he has got 8 fair size fish in it.
I was also told ,bigger the pond bigger the fish ,so i built a 11200L pond .
What i have noticed is that I have acheived more rapid growth rates than he has.Example in Jan this year I bought some baby koi +-8cm long I put 7 into my pond and 3 in his .4 of my koi had grown to 25cm,1 to 32cm by the end of June ,where as his at the same time where only measuring 14cm.We then tried to find out more on this ,
a lot of the research all seemed to lead to the following
1)genes of the fish
2)quality of the water
3)quality of the food(food hi in protiens,live foods ect.)
4)smaller amounts of food ,but fed 3 to 4 times a day
5)high levels of oxcygen in the water.
6) under stocking a pond ,(which as most koi keepers can agree with me is very difficult.)
hope this helps or adds to the debate
shaneA(South Africa)
Posted on Sep 28, 2005, 1:21 PM from IP address 196.25.255.242