Monday, October 19, 2009

Meet Sorgi, Blue Gray all over



One of my favorite fish here at the Koi Garden is a very nice GinRin Soragoi called, I think aptly, “Sorgi”.  A Soragoi is a blue grey Japanese Koi with a darker grey outline to each individual fish scale. GinRin refers to the bright, very shiny scales.  The combination provides a nice shiny blue grey fish with highly visible, defined scales.

For Koi with Doitsu scales, the effect is even more striking as there are fewer scales, so the outlined scales stand out more.

There are a number of interesting things about Soragoi Koi.  For some reason they are usually very calm fish.  It might be because Soragoi are closer or more related to, the older type of Koi; in effect more muttly.  It might even be that the “calm gene” in Koi is quite close to the “grey fish with reticulated scales gene” and as they are bred for the grey, reticulated scales, the calmness comes along for the ride.  I don’t know what it is but they are a very nice fish to have in your pond.

Our Sorgi is always the first to come up to the surface and great you.  He is the first to stick his head out of the water and suck on your finger; of course it could be he thinks it is food….  And Sorgi’s calmness gets transferred to the other fish.  All of the fish become calmer when Sorgi comes up to the surface.  Hopefully this happens only for humans and not for an itinerant Raccoon, otherwise Sorgi might not grow too old….  One of the Soragoi’s relatives, the Chagoi (Brown Koi) is the other type of Koi that is reputed to be tamer and friendlier.  It’s all in the genes!!! 



Another nice thing I have seen about Sorgi, which I think applies to all Soragoi Koi that I have seen, is they all seem to have a beautiful, classic body shape.  As you can see in the photo, Sorgi has a nice symmetrical even shape.

One other distinguishing feature about Sorgi is he loves to eat.  He will eat longer and more voraciously than any of our other Koi.  He is one of our largest fish and we expect him to grow much larger still.  He also picks fights with the other Koi to get more food.  A regular eating machine!!!  In fact, in Japanese Koi competitions, Soragoi and Chagoi are usually the largest fish there.

Sorgi is one of the oldest Koi in our pond and we hope to have him breed in the future.  Genes like that need to be promoted.

2 comments:

__who__ said...

Hi Brap,

Thanks for showing me your garden and home. It looks very beautiful and serene and a nice place to spend time and enjoy life.

Koi Garden Guy said...

Hey WHO, glad you could visit!
Show up ofter and see how it changes. I also sent you a message on your site about how to help your site.