Spawning Ropes:

For those of you who may wish to try to breed your Koi and other pond fish ... Then the first thing you are going to need are some spawning ropes - these encourage the spawning Koi to lay their eggs on these ropes or brushes .. and prevents possible damage to them and who may choose something far harder to lay their eggs on if good quality spawning ropes and brushes are not available .. Once you begin to see the spawning activities of the Koi, which will normally be early in the morning and I am sure that you will recognise this behaviour, the the fish need somewhere to encourage the females to lay their eggs and so you need to be considering placing your spawning ropes and brushes into the pond ... once the koi have laid the eggs on the Spawning Ropes, it is quite an easy matter to lift the whole rope out carefully so that you don't damage the eggs and place it into a specially prepared tank, or smaller pond, in which the temperature of that water should reflect the same temperature as the water in the main pond .. Once you have done that then by raising the temperature to around 22 c and then in approximately 4 days you will have literally thousands of baby fish .. the secret is keeping them alive and getting them to grow .. this is not easy Fry need to have food waiting for them when their mouths open approx 24 hours after hatching .. try feeding a Hard Boiled Egg Yoke - squeeze it through the foot cut off a pair of tights ... or something very fine ... or another good starting food is 'Liquifry' which will be available from your local tropical pet shop .. but the best food of all is freshly hatched brine shrimp ...

The bottom photo shows thousands of fry that have been hatched out and are just 13 days old and are 1/2" in size (20/06/02)

Good Luck to those who wish to try ...
 

Laying the Ropes in the Pond

Secure the end for easy retrieval

Nature does the rest