Growth Rates of Koi

So. How fast do your Koi grow?

Growth rates are an interesting thing. On one of our courses we learned that feeding fish to satiation (good luck if you have Koi like ours) is the way to go. This is best done as often as possible but three times a day is OK, and two times a day very much better than just once a day. More than three times a day yields slightly improved results – but note that this is not on Koi fish as any Koi keeper will be able to tell you very quickly that Koi will happily eat twenty times a day without ever appearing to reach satiation…

Also interesting was that feeding to 80% of satiation (good luck if you have Koi like ours) yields similar growth patterns to 100% satiation. As any Koi keeper would be able to tell you “ha ha ha! What a bunch of ….”

Koi can grow vigorously. As we have seen in our own experience and with customers experiments the results are varied and interesting. We have conduced some formal growth experiments the results of which have been most interesting to see.

Basically, the genetics of the parent fish are not quite as important as perhaps one might be led to believe. Look, if you want a Jumbo Koi you have to have Jumbo parents. But with good parent stock there is still a bell curve of size distribution and of course the AVERAGE size of the Koi from Jumbo parents will be larger than those from non Jumbo Parents.

But some Koi will grow to Jumbo from non Jumbo parents. They are likely to be not such high quality Koi, but the possibility exists. However it is the primary reason why bigger Koi of the same age fetch higher prices, all other factors being equal. Size, and we've said it before, counts.

To get your Koi to it's pre-determined genetic maximum is no easy task. What you feed your Koi is absolutely critical as is the quality of the water you keep the Koi in. Size of your pond will play a role, of course in terms of the simple fact that the more water, the faster the Koi will grow. Note that the size of the pond will NOT restrict the final size of your Koi, but rather the rate at which it gets there!