The Sunday prior to the harvest I started a siphon using a 2" pipe to drain the pond down low enough to get a good seining. The photo above shows the water level on the morning of the planned pull.
We had friends from many states as well as two from the
UK. We couldn't have asked for better help with the harvest.
Several days earlier we had set-up and filled five 1,000 gallon tanks and had
conditioned the water with pure salt to 0.3% and ClorAm-X. All those tanks were
only half full except one I filled completely so we could use part of the water
for the temp holding tanks.
Here I'm explaining how to fill the tanks we will use to temporarily hold the
koi until they can be sorted and moved to the larger tanks. We mixed half pond
water
with half of the treated water. We did this so the koi would have an easier
transition from pond water to clear, treated well water.
When all the holding tanks were ready some of the team rolled out the seine and suited up.
It's time to seine the pond.
In her spare time our attending KHA (Koi Health Advisor) gave a class on how to properly scrape and scope koi to check for parasites. I'm happy to report that our koi were clean of microscopic parasites.
All of the larger koi were transported from the pond via a sock net to a rinse tank and then placed into one of the 6' diameter show tanks with the mixed water. The temp tanks all had air stones for aeration.
While most of us were harvesting the koi, some of the crew were working hard to feed the masses.
This guy was just sitting around.
The harvest continues.
After all the harvested koi were placed in the temp tanks we took a lunch break and then started moving the koi to the larger tanks. The larger koi were moved in shipping bags with some water.
All the koi are safely in the tanks of treated water. A job well done by all!