South African 2014 National Koi Show

This year the South African National Koi Show was held up in Gauteng.

The quality of the bigger koi was definitely high this year. Agi Constantinou bought along a very strong collection of koi to the show and did very well to take a number of the main prizes on offer, including Grand Champion.Anyone who knows Agi can confirm how passionate he is about his koi and how meticulous he is about keeping them, and this shows in his fish.

Dream koi is proud to have supplied many of the winners at the show, the main ones being:-

RESERVE GRAND CHAMPION - A young Sakai Sanke with a great future. Owner Agi Constantinou.

 SUPERIOR CHAMPION- Again a beautiful Sakai Sanke.
Owner Ayesha Osman

Jumbo A Champion- Also owner by Agi and bred by Sakai. This koi is still only 3 years old!

The Jumbo A Champion when bought at the Sakai Auction as a 61cm nisai- very interesting to see the sumi development!

Mature Champion- again Sakai bred and owned by Hannes van Aswegen. Keep an eye open for this fish next year!

This an interesting video of the Reserve Champion, Jumbo A Champion and Mature Champion in the same bowl together at Dream Koi's facility last year.

Supreme Size 8- I unfortunatly only have a picture of this stunning 3 step Sakai Showa when she was a 56cm nisai. Since then Agi has developed her beautifully-especially the sumi which has come through strongly on the shoulder and head.














Well done to our other customers who won outstanding awards:-

Supreme Size 4 - Steve Galgoczy

Best potential Size 4 - Keshwin Singh

Best Potential Size 5 -Cliff Fagen

PAST CHAMPIONS

With our Show season in in full swing it's really interesting to go back and look at koi handled by Dream Koi that have won Grand Supreme and Reserve Grand Supreme titles over the years gone by:It's also interesting to see what other titles some of these sstunning koi have won:-

Still alive and well and way over 90cm!

                

                      

                             

                                 

                                     

                                                     

                                 

                                           

                                         

                                                                     

CHAGOIS

I've always had a soft spot for Chagois.I think it's a combination of their strength and simplicity.There is always a place for a chagoi in a pond. They get extremely tame/friendly and greedy ,so will often encourage the other koi in the pond to feed more profusely.

I've found that Ogata Koi Farm producers some extremely good Chagois.

I purchased these 2 Nisai at the Ogata November Auction in 2012 with Paul Coetzee- who shares my passion for this variety.Both koi are in my Champion's pond.

This fish is now only 3,5 years old and over 85cm- classic strong body and great, even scalation/ colour.

This Chagoi is more chocolate and is over 80cm and has developed a lot of character in her face with distinctive chubby cheeks-Paul's favorite! Won't be as big as the other-imo- but is still stunning! I am sure Paul will be showing at least one of them at the KZN Show in July and I will then get updates on pictures and sizes.


2 other stunning Ogata Chagois:-

A beautiful Chagoi grown by Ernst from Nisai to win some coverted awards.

Mark bought this Chagoi from Dream Koi who grew it on frm nisai to an 80cm Sansai. Mark has put another 7cm onto the koi and I'm sure we will see this fish do something special at the Western Cape Show later this year.

FILTER UPGRADE TO INDOOR CHAMPIONS POND

With the high cost of electricity and also to minimize the mantainence, but to increase the effectivness of the filters, I decided to make some changes to my filter system:-

I removed all the koi and blocked the bottom drains- I left the water running in the pond with the weirs directly connected to the protein skimmer and bakki shower. I then did the foundations for the filtration system.

The finished filter- 2 bottom drains to 1 Profidrum- thank you Mark from Koi Water Products!- and the 3rd bottom drain and 2 weirs to the other drum. From the drums the water goes through 3 filter chambers of Japanese matting- up/down system. The 4th chamber is the pump chamber where 2 x 55 00 liters an hour submersables push the water up and through 2 large stainless steel bakki showers flled with Momotaro Bakki House Media and then back to the pond. In addition I have a Speck pump pushing water through a sand filter and UV light and returning through my inside bakki shower with Ogata Crystal Bio.

One of the 3 Japanese mat filters

Pump chamber

Twin outside bakki showers

100 ton Champions pond- plenty of oxygen!

OFS GRAND CHAMPION 

After Hannes's success with the OFS GC I looked up the Sanke to see how much she had changed from when I purchased her as nisai from Sakai to now:-

The most interesting change has been the sumi quantity and the beni quality- made a huge difference to the koi!

KOI CARP

Congratulations to Ernst Van Dyk for having his pond featured in the very popular British koi magazine Koi Carp.

As most of you know, Ernst is an extremely passionate koi keeper with the ability to grow a number of koi big- and still maintain the quality- in a relativly small pond. The cover of the magazine shows a very beautiful Sakai Sanke which we purchased as nisai in November 2012 and subsiquently sold to Ernst.

It's great to see that Ernst is doing such a good job on the koi and I'm looking forward to see her progress.

Koi Carp cover

As nisai in November 2012