lil Hal

li'l Hal on the Left.

The Story of li'l Hal

by
Richard Renshaw

Sunday morning, at the August 1996 Ventura County Koi Show, I arrived to relieve the Koi show night guard. I discovered that one of the show tanks was especially covered with foam. It is not unusual to have bubbles in some of the show tanks which indicates a high ammonia level. Almost immediately another club member, Dan Miller, and I started doing a massive water change on the affected tank and were relieved that none of the fish were showing any signs of stress. Even after doing a massive water change there still was some bubbles present. Meantime, Ventura County Koi Society member Chuck McLaughlin started vacuuming the tank bottom. It was Chuck who discovered that the tank bottom was covered with eggs!

This incident became one of the highlights of the Koi show. Several participants tried collecting some of the eggs to take home because the big female Koi, in the show tank, was a very beautiful high quality Kohaku and one of the male Koi present was a quality Tashio Sanke owned by Chuck. This type of matching is desirable. Of course there was no guarantees since there were also an Ogon and several Butterfly Koi present in the same tank.

Only Chuck and I had any success hatching some eggs. All the fry I hatched were white and looked to me like baby Ogons. When the largest fry got to be about 1.5 inches long I noticed some red pattern color developing. The rest of the fry turned out to be all white in color. I kept the little Red and White Koi and named him li'l Hal in honor of Ventura County Koi Society member Hal Beavers. It is very unusual for a gang spawning to produce such a nice looking young Koi. The reason is, Koi do not breed true like goldfish. In Japan, professional breeders only keep a small percent of Koi fry from a spawning. For example; a single spawning might produce 180,000 eggs. After three or more culls the breeder may only keep 7,500 or so baby Koi. Of these 7,500 Koi, maybe only 700 will be considered quality Koi.

On August 1997, li'l Hal returned to the 1997 Ventura County Koi Show to celebrate his first birthday.

I kept li'l Hal for over 15 years. Lil Hal did not improve with age. In 2011 I donated li'l Hal to a Koi auction which benefited the ZNA SoCal chapter Koi show.

2011 li'l Hal in the Middle.