Breeding Koi: Controlling Your Pets' Population

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Breeding Koi: Controlling Your Pets' Population

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed

When it comes to domesticated pets, population control is really easy in breeding, because it is just simple to remove any possibilities in conception until the time has already come to pass for its opportunity. But it's quite different with Koi. They will always lay and spawn eggs, and others will fertilize them as well.

Now, since methods of contraception is not available for them, you can remove those unwanted babies after they have been born. Although this method might seem harsh, keeping all the offspring can bring harm to both your pond and the parent fish!

So, what would make the babies harmful? First, it has something to do with their capacity in size that they could grow into. They will grow up to 3 feet long, and this doesn't matter of what kind of habitat they're being placed into. Now, an overpopulation will turn a beautiful pond into an overfilled and wasteful ones!

With too many fish living in a smaller pond, the fish themselves will be very uncomfortable with their environment. In setting up your pond, make sure that you have a filtration system that's good for a specific number of fish. Adding extra fish without adding more system to your pond will promote harmful chemicals and gases that will impose danger to your pets.

How do you get rid of the babies? There are a lot of ways of doing this. First thing that you should do is to stop feeding your fish the moment you realize that spawning has already occurred. Don't worry about them starving, because they tend to focus more on natural foods if they aren't fed regularly.

And this "natural diet" includes their young. Even though they're not really cannibals, they tend to eat their offspring when they're still eggs or if they're looking like real insects, and they will only stop feeding until they see their young looking like real fish. That's why it's important for you to start this process as soon as you observe that spawning has occurred.

Another way to do this is by giving the unwanted babies away. Check your local pet store and see if they have programs that accept unwanted animals and give them good shelter. Some of these stores may even pay a certain amount of money for each fish since they will be selling them.

You can also look for local zoos that have this kind of program as well. If you know any local Koi society, you can let them know that you have unwanted Koi offspring. You can also find an online message board or group wherein you can post your messages and notifications there.

Breeding and keeping your Koi as pets is a fun hobby, but just be sure you take care of them by monitoring their population in your pond regularly.

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