President's Page: Joseph S. Zuritsky
QUALITY KOI COMPANY BIOGRAPHY
Last update 1/22/2007
I began as a Koi hobbyist about 38 years ago, discovering Koi in a tropical fish store. I immediately became infatuated with them and began the process of a gradual education through reading the very few books available at that time, then finding the magazine, Koi U.S.A. This magazine brought me to California, the then “mecca” of Koi in the U.S., and ultimately to the “source,” Japan (which I have since visited approximately 40 times), initially as a hobbyist, then as an amateur Koi dealer from my home, and finally as a professional Koi dealer. Subsequently, I built a Koi store in center city Philadelphia that was operated for approximately 3-4 years. Finally, after some amateur breeding of Koi in my backyard at home and further experimentation on a small farm in Pennsylvania, I purchased a 43-acre farm property in the farmlands of Salem County, NJ and created a Japanese-style Koi farm with the goal of producing top-grade Koi from carefully selected, high-grade imported Japanese stocks.
In the process, we have copied virtually all of the Japanese breeding and rearing techniques and even slightly improved on them from a standpoint of filtration and fish health. Since these two areas vary greatly from breeder to breeder in Japan (there are many levels of filtration and health), our improvements in these two areas are relative to the degree of sophistication of the particular Japanese breeder.
Update
This year’s harvest of our 2005 Nisei confirmed our theories and greatest hopes – that high-grade parent koi will produce high-grade offspring. I am pleased to state that we are producing high-grade koi in the
Last spring, some of our best koi went into our growout mud ponds at 8”-9”, weighing about one quarter of a pound, and came out in October at 15”-18”, weighing approximately 5 lb. Our 2003 Yonsai (3-1/2 year olds) came out of their mud pond between 22”-25”, weighing approximately 20 lb., with big, plump bodies and rich, full color, with all seemingly destined to grow to really great sizes.
We have begun putting some of our Nisei, Sansai and Yonsai koi on our website in our koi catalogue under “Search our Catalogue” for those searching for a specific variety, size, gender and price.
I am thrilled at the quality of our “select” and “tategoi.” Many from both grades of our koi production show real competition potential, but all the koi we are producing for sale will most probably satisfy the varied tastes of our North American customers.
We are now in the process of completing an important, new greenhouse facility that will permit us to harvest our top-quality tosai (babies) earlier than ever before, thereby providing us with a full 12-month growout program.
We are looking forward with some anticipation to the 2007 koi shows where our now larger koi will go head-to-head with the best that
