article: Koi Classifications

Koi Classifications

You are heading off the fish breeder to find a few fish for your new water garden, are you buying Koi or Koi Carp fish? How are you going to tell the difference – that is what we are going to tackle in this article. The Koi fish is actually called Nishikigoi, but Koi for short sounds much easier to pronounce. The words Koi has changed over the years to become the Koi Carp.

The words the Koi Carp are really not a proper name for the Koi fish and many people are using the names improperly. Calling the Koi a Koi Carp is really being redundant as the Koi is a Carp fish. You would try calling a Nishikigoi fish a Nishikigoi Koi fish, so you get what I mean, you should only be saying Koi fish or a Nishikigoi fish in order to sound like you know what you are saying when talking to a fish breeder.

If you want to have a classic Koi in the water garden, the purest of all Koi, you will need to focus your attention on your water garden, the environment that your fish will live in and the plants that are available for the Koi to eat. Sometimes your best bet can also be the eliminating the plants in your water garden and feeding your Koi, fish food in order to keep disease, pests, and other problems at bay away from your pedigree fish.

Do you want to raise Koi to display and for fish competition? The color of your fish, the markings, the scales, and how the fish ‘swim’ or ‘move’ are all considerations when choosing fish for your water garden. The pedigree fish for your water garden will have to be maintained in a manner that will exemplify exactly what the purest of Koi breeds represent.

In discussing the colors of the Koi, competition, and the pedigree fish, there are a few words that you will also need to know in order to discuss Koi colors with breeders. The word Hi is the color red, and the Sumi, is the color black for the Koi fish. Looking at the Koi that you want to purchase from a breeder, you will want to discuss fish that are more in line with the Hi than the Sumi, because the first Koi were not found in the colors of black, but red was one of the purest Koi colors that you will want.

The scales are another topic that is discussed when raising Koi that are for competition. Scales can either be complete over the body of the fish, meaning the fish has a very metallic look, or the scales, the metallic look can be completely absent from the look of the body. The scales that are very small where you can see the skin of the body is a type of fish that are often looked for in the purest of the Koi breeds as well.