Sunday, Aug 16 ZNA NorCal held our first Koi Handling Seminar. Instruction by Rick Blazo.  The event was held at Dr. David Tran’s fantastic pond.

A great BBQ lunch was served and a great crowd attended to learn and practice what Rick presented.

The series was suggested by Grant Fujita who recently celebrated 50 years in koi.  The first seminar is below.

The second seminar was held at Champion Koi on Aug .  Another good group attended. Many returned from the first event.

Tom gave an excellent presentation covering most of the tasks that someone on the benching team would need to carry out. He took the process from accepting a koi in a box, removing it from the bag in the tank, handling the koi for various benching tasks and finally returning the koi to the bag and boxing it up for return to it’s owner.

You can review this presentation below;

The third seminar was held at Genki Nishikigoi on Sept 19th. This event summarized the first two events. Kevin then gave a demonstration on removing a koi from a show tank and moving it to a measurement tank.

Finally Duke Nguyen discussed koi handling from a hobbyist point of view. Since the hobbyist will not be handling their koi as frequently as dealers and other professionals it is critical that a lot of thought be given to the movement.

Try to anticipate anything that could go wrong, for instance have a towel handy in case you drop the koi on the ground or it jumps out of the tub.

Plan your movements to be as short as possible and so you can maintain maximum control of the koi.  And, if the koi is large, get a buddy to help.

I somehow missed Duke’s talk, but most of the rest of the event is shown below.