How little are koi fed in dealers tanks??

[MikeWh]

Hi....I just wondered what the trick is to get koi behaving like they do when you visit a dealer, you know, following you as you walk past the tank & mouthing at the suface constantly.... I have tried cutting down feeding amounts in the past & my mutts still act the same....I've tried no food for a few days, after which for some reason they seem to take a while to re-build the confidence back up to feed again...
All I'm really asking is it just because they are starving, or are they stimulated in some other way??...Many thanks Mike

[Duncan]

MIke

i think its a case of small fish will chase food at every oportunity this is because they need lots of food with high protein to grow at this stage and its an unbuilt thing , as they get older they need less and become more cautious and wirely

so dealers feeding young fish they soon get used to the fact any one walk to the tank is going to feed them

thats my opinion you dont tend to see this in more mature fish of 15-18 inch

[welsh_kai_boy]

I always wonder about this too, when i visit my local shop there koi are mental and when someone has bought some food and chucks it in the water just errupts.

My fish are like yours Mike, shy away and then eat later.

[welsh_kai_boy]

Dunc, that explains it my fish are not young.

[boogatee]

it's because there as so many of them in the tank ... their instincts cause them to rush towards the food. If they emptied the tanks they'd behave even more (well, just as) timid than yours.

Having said that, my fish initially do rush to the food and then pretty much take their time about it after that. When I used to have an auto feeder, you would see them come to the surface a few seconds before the feeder went off.

[Gazza]

Hi Guys,

In many dealers ponds the fish are not always feed heavily due to high stocking rates and smallish bodies of water and sometimes filtration so the small fish know they need to get the food as quick as possible as otherwise it will be gone.

Imagine you was waiting for three dinners and there was six people i bet you wouldn't be at the back of the start line if you could help it

[MikeWh]

Hi & thanks for the great replys....I did try the auto feeder for a while, but found the amount of food hard to judge...I've gone to feeding twice a day again now & that is definatly producing much less waste & making daily filter cleans much easier ...
It just seemed odd that I could never get mine to act like that no matter how good the water was as the time.....Many thanks again.........Mike

[Gazza]

Hi Mike,

I have had people round before and the auto feeder has gone off and some of the fish are ready for the food and then just leisurely take the food and people say their fish are more frantic i personally don't want the frantic feeding as this can cause unnecessary damage to fins or fish and i can only assume if fish are feeding like that then perhaps they need a bit more food

[MikeWh]

Hi....Don't get me wrong, I can get them going a bit nuts by chucking in a few bits at a time & leaving it a while before repeating it. & they know that when the air is reduced & the skimmer returns are turned down on the pumps (central heating pumps) that food on its way.....I'm not unhappy with their behaviour it's just never the same as the fish in the dealers.....Mike

[Brek]

I have the same issue mike, I must have the only koi with an eating disorder, they swim up to food and then in some kind of blind panic thrash at it miss and swim off at full tilt, they have been covered since Oct so you'd think what ever caused this reaction in the beginning would have been forgotten by now, but no, now waters at 12 deg they seem more interested, and I dunno if its the pure water thats been added recently but I would characterise their feeding as more 'aggressive'

[MikeWh]

I tried them on some slices of orange yesterday, that seems to have sparked off a bit of a feeding frenzy ...Strange really cos last time I tried it they never touched it. ....Mike

[markam]

Hi mike, I feed the fish in our tanks everyday, just enough to maintain healthy stocks. I am sure they would eat 10 times what I give them but with high stocking levels in relatively small volumes of water I would run into health issues very quickly!! Also if im selling from the tsnk it isn't good for koi to be moved whilst being fed heavily. The more fish you have in a pool the more competition for food hence the climbing over each other toget at pellets (obviously high temps and good water will exaggerate this).
Also as Duncan mentions young fish are more likely to feed aggressively.

Thanks mark

[MikeWh]

Many thanks Mark for a straight & honest answer ......Mike