All Bay Area Koi Show

Today, Talli and I went to the 1st Annual All Bay Area Koi Show at the Wyndham Hotel in Pleasanton. The show was put on by the San Francisco Bay Area Koi Club and was sponsored by Genki Nishikigoi. The show was neat to check out because Talli and I were able get some perspective as to what a 30" + long fish looks like in comparison to our near 9" "Monster". Here is a picture of a couple of kohaku koi in their show tank waiting for the judging. These fish are the same type as our fish "Monster." They had far superior colors and they were between 18-20". As far as size went at the show, they were on the small size. We looked at some fish to buy at the show. Unfortunately, the ones at the show were $200 for the smallest ones. They were high quality koi imported from a well known koi breeder in Japan. So, after the show we went to a koi importer in San Jose that we found out about because of the show. Cherry Hill Koi had some beautiful fish. Talli and I were able to find three really nice quality koi that cost us much less in total than one fish would have cost us at the show. These fish were also imported from Japan. We got a Sanke, a Ginrin Yamabuki Ogon and a Longfin Shusui. I don't have good pictures of the fish, yet. I'll post some of them tomorrow in the 50 gallon quarantine tank we have in our front room. Today was a lot of fun. It was great seeing all the fish and obtaining some new additions for our pond. These last three fish have now capped the population of our pond. By all standards, the pond would be considered over stocked if not for the small size of almost all our fish. We know a bigger pond is in our future, but hopefully we won't need to start building it for a couple years at least.