How To Make Your Own Koi Fry Food

Many of my readers are interested in breeding baby Koi and raising them.

Well, you’ve come to the right place. There’s lots of information in this blog and more in my e-book, “What Your Pet Shop Owner Won’t Tell You About Keeping Koi” about how to successfully breed and raise Koi fry.

To give you a glimpse of what you can discover in my e-book (and bonuses), I will share about how you can make your own koi fry food.

When your koi fry hatches from their eggs, do not feed them for the first 3 days. Don’t worry, they will not starve to death. Their mouths are not fully developed yet, so feeding them the first 3 days would just be a waste of food. Worse still, the uneaten food will decompose if not removed from the pond and the resulting ammonia build-up will kill the koi fry. You can read about how ammonia is produced in your koi pond by reading my article The Nitrogen Cycle.

Once you see your koi fry swimming freely, that’s a sure sign that they’re ready to be fed.

The easiest thing to feed them with is hard-boiled egg yolk. But this is not nutritious enough. A better option is to feed them with infusoria (minute aquatic creatures and single-celled algae) or daphnia (freshwater crustaceans). Feeding of 3 day old koi fry should be 4-5 times a day.

Koi Fry Food, Infusoria

Daphnia, another type of natural koi fry food

But you may be thinking, “How do I get infusoria or daphnia?”

Here’s a simple way.

Gather some ‘clean’ pond water (’clean’ means you have removed all organic particles from the water). Peel a turnip and cut the white inside part into small 1/2 inch squares. Drop these pieces into the pond water. After about 5 or 6 days, they will decompose and be filled with visible infusoria.

Now take a syringe and draw out some of the infusoria-filled water from the side of the turnip. If you fill a clear glass container with this water, you will see it teeming with thousands of tiny single-celled creatures moving about. This is infusoria. Simply feed this to your fry a few times a day.

After the first week, you can start feeding your koi with brine shrimp. As they grow, you can eventually feed your koi with koi pellets. But make sure that the size of the pellets are small enough for the smallest sized koi to eat.

A Good Koi Pond Design

Here’s what someone who bought my e-book did.

Good koi pond design

Notice her koi pond design.

A - Her koi pond is well aerated with small waterfalls and airstones. Sufficient aeration of your water is crucial for the health of your koi. If you find your koi gasping for breath or always staying close to the waterfall or other sources of air, it means your pond is not aerated well enough.

B - She does not overcrowd her pond with too many koi. I know it’s tempting to buy lots of koi (after all, they are beautiful). But overcrowing will stress your koi and this will lead to sickness and disease.

C - Her pond design has curved corners, not sharp ones. This makes it easier to clean and get rid of uneaten koi food and debris that accumulates at the sides of your pond.

D - She has safety measures in the form of a fence around her koi pond. This should be mandatory in most countries.

Isn’t that a beautiful koi pond?

You bet!

If you want to know how to start your own koi keeping hobby and build a pond just like this, visit Keeping Koi for my e-book that reveals ALL you need to know.