Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Operation Jumbo

Some 1.5 years ago during Christmas of 2006, my Koi buddy Andrew and I bought some 15 old and unwanted jumbo kois (some with injuries and fading colours of their former show koi glory) for a friend and moved them in our cars to his fish farm up in Kedah.

That was a huge operation, and halfway near Sungkai, Andrew began driving like a madman possessed, his slowing and revving manouvers would have made Michael Schumacher jealous. He managed to stop suddenly, got out of his car and gasped that some of the bags were leaking.

With the stark prospect of dying jumbo kois staring at us in the face, we got off the highway in search of an aquarium shop for new bags, water and oxygen but none were to be found in the small towns nearby for nearly 30 mins.

When all seemed lost, Andrew the brilliant guy spied a Chinese Restaurant, swung his car in and braked to a screeching stop. Out he jumped with another friend dragging a leaking near empty bag into the restaurant shouting "water, water"!. The workers dropped their jaws at the sight of mad men with a huge fish in a plastic bag, wondering whether we wanted the fish fried or steamed!

To cut the long story short, Andrew scooped water from their display aquariums into the bag, and sped off looking for an aquarium shop and finally found one where we changed bags and replenished water and oxygen.

It was quite a sight to behold that day in that small town somewhere near Ipoh with a large crowd gathering around emitting "Ooohs" and "Aaahs" at the sight of those still beautiful jumbos.

Soon we were on our way and reached Lunas some 8 hours after we left KL. More surprises were in store as some of the fish spawned the next day!

We managed to pair a beautiful jumbo shiro female with pure white shiroji and thick sumi with a Matsunosuke Kindai Showa male, and I kept some of their offspring.
I managed to bowl 2 up for close viewing on Sunday:










This 45cm female showa had a longer body when young, but has since put on bulk on her shoulders with a huge hump to boot. Hopefully she will put on more length again.
There is not enough beni currently although she inherited her mother's good sumi and shiroji traits, but there is still hope as the odome beni only appeared as a small dot 2 months ago and has since developed into a nice patch. If the tiny beni dots on the head fills out, she will be quite a stunner.













This 48cm female kohaku inherited her mother's pure white shiroji and deep red beni from her matsunosuke showa father. Her thick tail tube holds out some promise for the future.

One other shiro sibling I did not managed to bowl up has spectacular sumi, shiroji and body confirmation.

I am keeping my fingers crossed that all 3 siblings will develop to their full potential.

All in, Operation Jumbo was rollicking good fun, with more in store in the future with these few offspring :)

Jeff

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