Niigata 03/02/08

Well it is my last day here I'm sitting around waiting for my train. I was off yesterday from koi anyway instead I went to a Shinto Temple near the sea port of Teradomari. Here are a few pictures plus one from my hotel room.

I have seen a lot of temples on my trips to Japan and this one was interesting and also the largest in the Nagaoka are.
These girls are tying their hopes and prayers onto this simulated tree in hopes they will come true.

Niigata 03/01/08

These workers are clearing some snow from the roadway in Yomagihira.

There is still a lot of snow everywhere. This lady is moving it from her garden.

A few koi from Yozimon.

02/27/08 Japan

I'll be in Japan from 02/25/08 to 03/03/08. There is about 2' of snow up in the mountains and it seems to snow some everyday.

One of my first stops was at Fujio Oomo's koi house. The water is about 22c or 70f and the koi are plenty hungry.

Oomo happens to use Saki-Hikari which we now carry in our shop.

KHV Testing 12/10/07

I had to do some KHV testing on some of our new arrivals over the weekend. This is part of the setup. We knock out the koi and lay them up here while we draw the blood.

The koi are labeled and photographed to keep track of their blood samples. This koi is about to get knocked out.

In this picture I'm drawing out the blood. Fortunately not much is required. It isn't too hard to draw the blood after you have done a few.

Another candidate. We can do KHV blood testing at your place or ours email me for more information.

12/07/07 Another polyurea spray liner

I had a polyurea repair to do in Long Island NY over the last few days. The pond is about 10,000 gallons with one bottom drain, a skimmer and a mid level suction. It was sprayed a year or so ago but the prep work wasn't done perfectly and some of the polyurea started to peel off and clog the drains and skimmers. This pond has a window into the basement which is going to be a living room in the future.


The pond originally had a spin drifter bottom drain installed in it but this drain leaked from the airline so I replaced it with a Rhino II aerated bottom drain. This seemed like the perfect time to replace the drain.

I sprayed the pond in blue first which makes it easier to see any pin holing or misses when I go back over it in black which is the finished color.

I forgot to mention before spraying the new polyurea spray liner the existing polyurea had to be scraped to remove any lose product plus the entire surface was sanded and wiped with primer.

It snowed while I was spraying but this awesome winter cover stopped any of the snow from getting in. This is one of my helpers on the job.

Blue Burst! It looked kind of neat and would make a good color for an aquarium but this pond was going to be finished in depthless black.

This is the black going over the blue.

Inbetween coats I fill any pin holes or inperfections that show up from the rough surface on the concrete.

Finished with the Rhino II bottom drain installed.

This is the view the koi will have from inside the pond.
This is a return and below it is a mid level suction point. Normally these would be placed farther apart but in this case the return was installed after the fact by tunneling under a finished sidewalk and patio so there weren't a lot of options.
The finished product ready to be filled minus the puppy.

When I was at Kaneko's fish house I took this video of some Tosai. I have seen and taken this same type of video many times before but I can't help myself everytime I see baby koi feed.

Before I left for Japan I was finishing a job in North Jersey. I have done a lot of work for the home owners and this job should finish their pond. It was a liner pond that always had a leak so now that we can spray polyurea pond liner we finished the inside of the pond and sprayed liner on the inside. We also installed Koitoilet aerated bottom drains and new returns with wider flanges.

The pond was made from wall pavers and then I attached stucco wire to the pavers and then covered the wire with stucco type mortar mix. After the mortar was attached and it dried it was primed so the polyurea would adhere without any problems.

In between coats we check for pinholes and imperfections. They are marked so we can pay extra special attention on the next coat.

Marudo giving me and my group a little lesson about koi selection.

The koi show was packed on sunday.

There is road construction pretty much everywhere and I saw this sign and thought it was funny.

This is Yozimon's cat. It is really pretty and I can't resist taking it's picture every time I see it. I don't know much about the different breeds of cat so I was shocked when I asked the type and they told me it was an American short haired standard.

It is getting close to the end of my trip so I wanted to make sure I posted a few more pictures of different things I've been seeing.