This is the continued blog of my visit to Koicentrum van Keulen last week. Below are links to other days blogs.
You can find day 1 here – http://niigata-nishikigoi.com/content/day-1-koicentrum-van-keulen
Day 2 here – http://niigata-nishikigoi.com/content/day-2-koicentrum-van-keulen
Day 3 here – http://niigata-nishikigoi.com/content/visit-koicentrum-van-keulen-day-3 and here http://niigata-nishikigoi.com/content/visit-koicentrum-van-keulen-day-3-…
Day 5 here – http://niigata-nishikigoi.com/content/catching-yagenji-sanke-day-5-koice…
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Many who know me know that I really don’t like Shusui, I have only ever owned one, purchased many years ago and, like so many, its beautiful blue and orange body soon became black. Only very rarely do I see one that has any appeal to me, indeed the best in variety at the All Japan Show generally have some nice characteristics however, by and large, most leave me less excited.
When my plan first came together to visit Jeroen and his family at Koicentrum van Keulen I knew that one of the varieties that had been spawned this year, for the 1st time, was Shusui, and that the 2nd selection of them was to take place.
This was my very first experience of seeing young Shusui first hand, athough I have seen photos.
Here is a post I made last year about Shusui at Konishi – http://niigata-nishikigoi.com/content/konishi-shusui
Here are some at Yamaju Koi Farm in Yamakoshi – http://niigata-nishikigoi.com/content/yamaju-shusui-one-month-apart
Jeroen’s spawning was between a female from Satoshi Tanaka and 2 males from Mano.
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I’ve featured Satoshi Tanaka’s Shusui on here before and in this post – http://niigata-nishikigoi.com/node/1102 – I stated, ‘The look of Satoshi san’s Shusui is very different to many, very pale still at this stage, the back scalation very undefined, the ‘beni’ somewhat pale.’
Just a couple of weeks back Satoshi san had posted this image of some of his Shusui offspring from this year. If you compare them to those posted by Konishi and Yamaju at the links above very different.
Having never culled them personally I watched Jeroen for a couple of rounds of selection to get a feel for what he was keeping. He had spoken to Satoshi san who had advised to keep the palest ones. Here is a picture of a mix of Shusui fry that were selected over a couple of hours, 4000 fry were reduced in number by around 50%.
As you can clearly see there were many lighter ones with a dark like just appearing on the head. Some of the darker ones were kept because they exhibited good scalation, in effect a full row of scales on the dorsal ridge.
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The shot above shows 6 of the darker coloured fry. Whether co-incidental it appeared that the darker ones were generally larger. The 3 pics below show one of these Koi photographed from all angles in the hope it can be identified in the future to follow its progression.
This net includes some of the paler fry, closer to those of Satoshi Tanaka above.
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Again, one individual in close up. Interestingly many commented when this was shown on Facebook together with the one above that they were in fact the same Koi. I can assure you they aren’t.
At lunchtime, after I’d taken the above pictures, Jeroen started to look through a few snaps he’d taken of some of the fry 2 weeks earlier at the first selection, this was one of them.
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This is the same Shusui fry that I had photographed and have posted above.
What is perhaps most interesting is how quickly the blue has developed over the course of 2 weeks between the selections. Whilst I haven’t developed a new found love for Shusui I’m certainly fascinated to see how these 2 individuals develop of the coming months.
