Considering koi fry

 A friend of mine recently asked me if I want some of her homebred young koi for my pond, since my pond isn't going to be a pure wildlife pond (it's not really suitable for that and we don't have enough waterbased wildlife here to warrant it) I jumped at the chance to add some more colour for free. Koi which appear as fry in a pond as a result of unselected liaisons between the various varieties tend to be a bit of a mixed bag but colourful nonetheless. The fun for me is looking at the tiny fry and seeing if a) you can find something that is not only aesthetically pleasing but also in an acknowledged variety and b) working out what you think they might end up as.

 

I suspect this might end up being a bit of a pretty Shiro Utsuri (a black koi with white markings). You can aslo see some gin rin (sparkling metallic) scales coming through on its bacl. It looks like that white will come through rather pleasingly if all goes well and this will grow up into a beauty.

Now this might charitably be called a tancho showa; tancho being a fish with a red crown (like the crane) and showa being a black koi with white and red markings. Again, this could grow up into a really nice fish.

This guys a pretty apricot orange with a bit of white and black and a bit of gin rin scaling. The white base colour makes this orange/black/white fish a sanke (aka taisho sanshoku) not a showa. Again, should make for a pretty koi in a year or so.

I suppose you'd call this a kigoi (yellow carp) [Tai Haku tip: The beauty of big matt yellow/orange koi should not be understimated when you're checking out the fancy metallic, mirrorscaled and/or multicoloured koi in the fishshop - think how impressive they'll be in 10, 20 or 30 year's time. Even more impressive are huge koi so tame they eat from your hand, for some reason the one coloured varieties seem keener to do this so don't overlook the chocolate-brown chagoi or grey soragoi either]

As for the above I'm not even gonna try to put them into a category. Will they ever grow into anything beautiful? Hmmm. Time will tell. Time will tell.