Koi Water Garden Ltd - High Grade Japanese Koi & Related Products

09/01/2025

Firstly, a very happy new year to everyone! Lets hope it going to be a prosperous one too.

All of our Koi (and our fancy Goldfish) have now successfully completed quarantine and are ready to be collected or delivered.

Clearly with the current weather conditions, only those who are heating their ponds should consider taking delivery of their new Koi.

Our pond temperatures currently range from between 10 deg c and 17 deg c so if you are thinking of collecting, or requesting a delivery please contact us first so we can confirm the relevant pond temperature.

The new Koi will now gradually be cooled down over the course of the next month, and by early February our pond temperatures should be close to ambient.

So if you are not in a position to take your chosen Koi now, please contact us next month for an update.

In the mean time we would ask all of our Koi customers who have purchased new Koi to contact us to pay the balance for their Koi now.

See you soon!

14/12/2024

So sad to hear of the passing of Hasegawa san, one of the great Kohalu breeders in Niigata. A very nice guy too, another breeder lost, with no-one to pass the farm onto.

RIP...

29/11/2024

The 2nd shipment of our new Koi, and our new fancy Goldfish have now arrived safely are are on show!

This year for the first time we have decided to import and market certain varieties of Japanese fancy Goldfish to augment our range of live fish.

The market for fancy Goldfish in the UK seems to be expanding all the time so now seems to be the perfect time to enhance our offerings.

So to start we have Oranda, Red cap Oranda, Azuma Nishiki and Japanese long tailed Ryukin in stock all in Tosai sizes, and these will be available for sale after a period of quarantine.

All are welcome to visit and view all our new stocks!

24/11/2024

The first shipment of our new Koi from the Autumn 2024 harvest have now arrived and are settling in well. They are available to reserve now, but will be quarantined for 6 weeks or so prior to release from our premises.

The 2nd shipment arrives mid this coming week and will be on show from Thursday 28th November.

14/11/2024

So we are now back from our Japan trip, and what a trip it has been - actually one of the more unusual trips.

As usual very fruitful, lots of travelling, lots of highs and some lows!

Unusual as this year the harvest schedule was all over the place, with some breeders harvesting very early, and selling out - whilst others had still not even harvested all of their Tosai by the time we left.

Certainly many harvests were not completed and the normal order of Tosai first, then Yonsai, Sansai and Nisai last thrown on its head.

So inevitably we got to some farms too early, some too late but fortunately visited enough at just the right time to find pretty much exactly what we wanted.

The other notable point to observe was that there seems to be an ever increasing gap between the prices being charged by the well known big names such as Marudoh, Isa and Dainichi for example, when compared to the numerous smaller relatively unknown breeders who do however still produce beautiful Koi.

We were seeing prices at some of the bigger names a factor of ten times that of some smaller breeders when comparing Koi of the same variety, size age, s*x and perceived quality.

Of course quality is totally subjective and I am sure that the prices paid for longstanding and established bloodlines can be worth every penny, and the years it can take to establish a stable bloodline must be taken into account, so I dont mean to degrade any of the top names concerned.

However it just seems to me that that price 'gap' is widening all the time.

I know everyone will have their own views on this, and I am sure some will disagree vehemently - but everyone is entitled to their view!

Our new Koi from this years harvest will start to arrive soon, the first shipment mid next week so this should be on show from Thursday 21st November.

You are welcome to visit!! BTW Check out the picture attached of Aokis no 1 Koi this year - amazing or what!!!

09/11/2024

Yesterday we travelled down to Nagoya, another 4 hours on four trains and then local taxis to reach our destination – a large Koi and Goldfish farm and in terms of Koi always interesting as we never know exactly what varieties of Koi he will have in stock because he tends to buy in high grade Tosai from a number of respected breeders and then frown on in his massive mud ponds.

This year he had Go Sanke, Chagoi, Ochibe, Kujaku, Benegoi, Shiro Utsuri amongst others but we purchased a super Sansai Shiro Utsuri and a box of mixed Chisai Nisai – small two year olds.

Although we were only there for two hours, the next farm on our agenda was again in a different prefecture so it meant another four hours on multiple trains again to get to the necessary location, this time in Shizuoka prefecture.

The travelling becomes an issue when away from the Niigata area as there are relatively so many farms in close proximity in Niigata and then very few close together in other prefectures. Since we prefer to visit twenty plus breeders in a trip, this inevitably means lots of travelling.

So whereas in Niigata we can get round between 5 and 8 farms every day, elsewhere we will be lucky to visit two per day.
So that evening we stayed in the city of Hamematsu ready for the next days visit.

Today we visited Matsuo in Hamematsu, right by the coast – he breeds many varieties, and offers for sale Tosai and Nisai only but is always worth visiting.

Whilst there, we received the results for the recent Isa auction, one of many held over the last week or so. Isa is famous for Showa, and his prices reflect that.

His no 1 Showa has just sold for 20,000,000 Yen – roughly £100,000 ! Absolutely crazy. The average price pond side for his 3 year old Showa is now 2 to 3 million yen, and at this level unaffordable to many, but auction sales results make these pond side prices look cheap.

I have to say that I am becoming worried by the rapidly increasing trend of offering Koi at auction.

Since auctions started in Japan, they have become an everyday norm, and whereas we used to see an auction taking place every month, we are now seeing individual breeders holding auctions virtually every day.

However, not only is this trend worrying as it is surely driving up prices for the best Koi, we now seem to be seeing lots of lower grade Koi, especially male Koi being offered in auctions in order to maximise returns.

To the unwary, auction Koi may seem like a good buy, simply because if a Koi is offered at auction the assumption is that it must be high grade – whereas in fact quite the opposite can be true.

Lets hope some common sense kicks in at some stage, because people will surely realise that inevitably , Koi bought at auction will always carry a high price tag regardless of quality.

Anyway enough whinging, tomorrow we visit our last two Koi farms before returning to the UK.

So hopefully more tomorrow!

08/11/2024

08/11/2024

One super Sansai Shiro Utsuri purchased today in Nagoya.

07/11/2024

First to Sakuma – where we were to collect boarding Koi that had been grown on for a customer since the Spring. We purchased a Jumbo Tosai Tancho Showa from Saum in May at 23cm and when measured today it was 37cm – a great growth rate on just 6 months. The Sumi had also developed as expected so now it really is a stunning two year old!

Sakuma had earlier netted out his super large Nisai – up to 60cm! but these were mostly Kohaku and Sanke, very few Showa which is what we were actually looking for. He also is another breeder netting out very late due to the very hot weather and in fact wont now be netting out his Sansai until next week – crazy.

Then on to Hiroi – related to Hiroi in Niigata – but this Hiroi breeds Doitsu Sanke and Doitsu Showa as well as Goshiki and some other varieties and we were lucky enough to find very good Doitsu Showa and Sanke and also Larger Nisai Gin Rin Showa – so we purchased a box of both varieties.
Overall a pretty good day.

Tomorrow we travel down to Nagoya – another 4 hours journey on multiple trains….

Again please check out our Japan trips page of our web site at https://www.koicarp.org.uk/koi_carp_japan_trips.htm if you need further information or pricing on any of the new Koi.

06/11/2024

Yesterday we didn’t get a chance to write our blog, apologies.. no time in the evening. But to recap, yesterday was largely spent at Shinoda, who had netted out a large Nisai harvest of 300 new Doitsu Go Sanke and Hi Utsuri.

Shinoda had rung a number of agents inviting them to attend, so when we arrived, as group number 3, we were pleasantly surprised that the place was not yet overrun with buyers.

Shinoda ran a lottery system to allow customers to choose from the new harvest, so that each group was allowed to choose one Koi in strict sequence. However with 300 new Koi to go through this would take some time. Only those buyers who arrived by 9am were allowed to participate, and we just made it in time.

The way this was handled involved bringing the new Koi into the viewing area around 20 at a time, placed in a 1 meter bowl, and then allowing us to select from these and then placing the Koi chosen in keep nets, and the Koi not chosen in an empty pond.
The process took three hours! As we started, more new buyers arrived, but as they had missed the chance to join the lottery, they had to wait for us to finish or start selecting Koi from another pond entirely, and from Koi not associated with the new harvest.

By mid morning there were about a dozen buyers on site, and things got pretty chaotic, but by lunchtime, we had finished selecting, taken our pictures and left, absolutely soaking wet!
I am guessing that Shinoda must have sold at least half of the new harvest in the first 24 hours.

Videos of the new Koi posted with this blog as usual – and please remember that if you need more information and pricing on any of the new Koi purchased by us on the trip please refer to the Japan trips page on our web site at https://www.koicarp.org.uk/koi_carp_japan_trips.htm