The dreaded RTC

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
S

Supalah17

Candiru
MFK Member
Feb 21, 2014
258
73
46
Buffalo, New York
So this is a far off plan, 2-3 years, and I’m not buying anything until it’s all set up and ready (no buying a big fish with the “ill totally get a bigger tank one day”).

I’m planning a build for a pond in my back yard, not positive on exact dimensions, but it will be at least 3,500 gallons when said and done. Then my garage will have a winter holding tank of around 1,800 gallons.

My fiancé had flexed her “If you’re building it in our yard, I get a say in stocking” muscles, and she wants a pair of 3’ koi in the pond. I want a RTC. So would these fish work or am I looking at raising up 2 big beautiful Koi just to be expensive food for the catfish when it starts approaching 5’? I can/will give up my RTC dreams until the Koi pass on naturally or I demolish my whole house and live in a pond lol.

The pond will have an outdoor sump style raised pond for filtration, on the outside it will look like a stone pile with water in it trickling down a stream back to the main pond and a ton of plants growing out of each (the sump and the 3,500+ pond) so I’m not too worried about filtration, and again it’s going to be huge so I’m not worried about space. Just the likelihood of them being able to co-exist.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Deadliestviper7 and thebiggerthebetter
I suspect that the rtc will pick off the koi as soon as it is big enough to eat them.
 
The RTC will not grow to 5'. Most likely it will reach 4' or a bit over after a long time, if a male. If a female, it will be 3'-3.5'.

It'll be a challenge to transfer back and forth such a large, powerful, and spiny fish.

Koi can live up to a century. Barring accidents, poor care, etc., they will see you pass on first. The oldest koi whose age was scientifically proven lived to be 264 of some such years old.

USA koi will never reach 3' except 1 in a million. Most struggle to reach 2' even after 10-20 years. Poor genes. No culling.

3' koi with 3' RTC could be successful but 3' koi are tremendously and entirely too precious to be tested like that. Just keep the RTC in your garage, I'd say.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Backfromthedead, Deadliestviper7, celebrist and 3 others
thebiggerthebetter said:
The RTC will not grow to 5'. Most likely it will reach 4' or a bit over after a long time, if a male. If a female, it will be 3'-3.5'.

It'll be a challenge to transfer back and forth such a large, powerful, and spiny fish.

Koi can live up to a century. Barring accidents, poor care, etc., they will see you pass on first. The oldest koi whose age was scientifically proven lived to be 264 of some such years old.

USA koi will never reach 3' except 1 in a million. Most struggle to reach 2' even after 10-20 years. Poor genes. No culling.

3' koi with 3' RTC could be successful but 3' koi are tremendously and entirely too precious to be tested like that. Just keep the RTC in your garage, I'd say.
Click to expand...
The Koi fish I’m buying are coming from a reliable Japanese breeder and are guaranteed to hit at least 2.5’ long (with proper care), and they’re costing a damn fortune lol. The RTC costs about 20$ at my LFS, so yea I probably won’t risk it haha. A friend of mine has RTC in a 22,000 gallon pond in his back yard that was 4’9” when he measured it at the end of last summer (it’s around 10 years old). So that’s what I was judging its potential size off of. I’m thinking I’ll hold off on the RTC, any idea if a tiger shovel nose would have better results? They just got some of those in a week ago at my LFS. I just want a large bottom dweller besides a common pleco that could go with the Koi. The whole pond system with the “sump” is going to be pushing 5,000g of water volume, 2 koi just seems like a waste of all that space ya know?
 
xDestro said:
Chinese high fin sharks, people keep them with koi, peaceful as can be and u won't have to transfer.... Or if you want something more unique try looking at some species of sturgeon
Click to expand...
I probably won’t try to keep anything outdoors during the winter, I live in western NY and a couple years ago we had 8’ of snow lol. I’ve heard Koi can survive a freeze if the pond is deep enough and you keep an opening in the ice sheet, but I don’t wanna risk it. It looks like those sharks hit 3’ pretty easy, so the 2 koi and a couple of those in an 1800 gallon plywood indoor pond be ok for a third of the year?
 
  • Like
Reactions: Deadliestviper7
xDestro said:
Chinese high fin sharks, people keep them with koi, peaceful as can be and u won't have to transfer.... Or if you want something more unique try looking at some species of sturgeon
Click to expand...
Don't those have to transfer over to brackish or salt?
 
moe214 said:
Don't those have to transfer over to brackish or salt?
Click to expand...
The sharks or the sturgeon? I can’t find anything on the banded sharks needing brackish/salt, and I know for a fact there are fully freshwater sturgeon in the Great Lakes. It’s possible there are brackish/marine sturgeon but I have no idea.
 
Shark. Ik sturgeon are freshwater lol. I could very well be wrong can't say I've read into them much and when I did it was years ago now.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
MonsterFishKeepers.com
Top Bottom