From our friend Dale in West Virginia, USA

My Koi love garlic. I grow my own heirloom Italian garlic, of which I have two types, elephant and red. I put the garlic in a blender with adequate water and chop the garlic slowly until it is reduced to small, edible pieces, appropriate for all the sizes of Koi that you may have. Until the Koi discover how tasty the garlic is, they may ignore it, but once you've begun to feed the garlic to them on a regular basis--they will be smiling and waiting for more.

There's also a paste food that you may buy which requires mixing with vitamin e, flax seed oil, Koi clay, cod liver oil as well as tomato or orange juice. (This mixture after blending well, makes a cookie dough type product). One addition that I make is blending the garlic and orange or tomato juice together and then mixing this with the dry ingredients.

Once all of the above is mixed, I usually make "meatballs" out of the stuff and freeze them. Let the "meatballs" thaw and break/form them into pea-sized pieces... (Yes, it takes a little time, but doesn't everything?) Every other day in the summer the Koi get one or more of these "treats" and they are like sharks in a feeding frenzy when the first piece hits the water.

The Koi go crazy for this!

Remember it takes time for your fish to adjust to new foods, so persist with them for a while.

Thanks Dale!

From Philip in Port Elizabeth

Hi William

I thought I would just drop you a line and let you know what my Koi eat.

I have only had them now for 2 months and they are already trained to hand-feed.

After looking at your web-site I thought I would try a few things to keep them disinterested in my plants.

Some of the things they eat are Broccoli, even the stems, Cauliflower and Carrots, but only when crushed to a pulp. These vegetables are all cooked till soft.

My fish are still very young, between 6 and 10 cm., so I was quite surprised that they took these foods so eagerly.

Regards

We have also had a few people who say that their Koi go bananas for Kiwi fruit...

Remember if you want Hikari, just e-mail us!