sorry i ve only got back to this so long ago now as for ur ansawer yes your right but we arent talkin 200yrs ago if ur talking about farming for food thats more like 2,500yrs around (551-479 BC) and it was done not in japan it was in china they were called (magoi) and mainly were black, grey or red but there were no ornamental value to them yet it was just food
they were introduced in japan by at that time an invading china in (200AD)and it was kept by a japanese emperor and.but that was it till about the 1700s when the carp were given to ricer farmers in a village named Yamakoshigo,*****ta, Japan were they introduced them to there iragations to supplement their diets of rice do to the fact that *****ta Jpn. is high in the mountains witch made it almost im possible to farm in the winter so that ment no rice , but lot of hatf frozen BUT! alive carp(yum yum yummy
),but the Color mutations didnt acurre till 1804-1830 and were red,yellow and white colored carp
witch later was coltavated to form what we call today as (KAWARIMONO) witich are the solid color KOI.and from there started all the breeding and inbreeding to. with (MAGOI CARP) to make all the different breeds to day but Japan is big so alot of the follwing spreaded out to all over japan so you are not wrong about the in breeding but as soon as the mutations were started to be noted and the word got out about these colored and beutiful fish., it began
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woof i wonder if that could fit ont a Snapple cap