Age composition, growth, and reproduction of koi carp(Cyprinus carpio)in the lower Waikato region, New Zealand

Abstract

A total of 566 koi carp (Cyprinus carpio) from the lower Waikato region were aged from scales and opercular bones, and growth was modelled with the von Bertalanffy growth function. There was no difference in growth rate between male and female carp. Growth of koi carp between zero and 3 years of age was lower than that of common carp in europe and Australia. however, after 5 years of age the growth of koi carp was higher than that of common carp in europe, but still below that of carp in Australia. males rarely lived in excess of 8 years, whereas females lived to 12 years. mean total fecundity calculated from 44 running-ripe females was 299 000 oocytes (±195 600 sd) (range 29 800-771 000). relative fecundity ranged from 19 300 to 216 000 oocytes kg-1 total body weight, with a mean of 97 200 (±35 000 sd) oocytes kg-1. Feral koi carp in the Waikato are capable of multiple spawnings within their lifetimes. Within a spawning season, Waikato populations of feral koi carp contained females that spawned once, and females that had the potential to have spawned repeatedly. Female gonadosomatic index (Gsi) varied with season and was negatively related to water temperature.

Maternal effects of common carp on egg quantity and quality

“…In Minnesota, USA, and Ontario, Canada, fecundity increased with total length and exceeded 1,000,000 eggs for females 4700 mm (Swee and McCrimmon 1966;Bajer and Sorensen 2010). In contrast, mean common carp fecundity in New Zealand was 299,000 eggs per female and was unrelated to the body length (Tempero et al 2006). In Ontario, common carp fecundity increased similarly with total length as in our study, whereas fecundity did not increase as rapidly in the Minnesota and Australian populations (Figure 1).…”

Age determination in common carp Cyprinus carpio: history, relative utility of ageing structures, precision and accuracy

“…This suggests that alternative structures to the scale should be used whenever carp is to be released after capture, and to the operculum when sacrificing the fish does not represent a problem. Regardless, the scale alone (Cazorla and Pizarro 2000;Colautti and Freyre 2001;Oyugi et al 2011) and the scale and operculum together (Tempero et al 2006) were recently used successfully in validated studies (Table 7). However, the populations of carp were in the former case 'short-lived' (1-7 years) and in the latter 'medium-lived' (1-12 years), and always in temperate climates (types Cfa and Cfb, Köppen-Geiger system) (note that the 'relative longevity' of these populations is gauged after Vilizzi and Copp 2017).…”

“…This structure has generally been used in conjunction with either scales only (English 1952;McConnell 1952;Rehder 1959;Jester 1974;Ç etinkaya 1992;Ç etinkaya et al 1995a, b;Ş en 2001;Tempero et al 2006) or scales plus other hard parts (Effendie 1968;Lubinski et al 1984;Cochrane 1985;Raina 1987;Bhandari et al 1993;Vilizzi and Walker 1999), and seldom on its own (Tsimenide 1978; Ç olakoglu and Akyurt 2011) (Table S1 in Supporting Information). Ridge-like projections radiating from the fulcrum (referred to as 'buttresses' or 'fingers of bone' : English 1952 andMcConnell 1952, respectively) may often obscure the first one to three annuli, challenging in such cases correct age estimation.…”

Captive broodstock development of common carp Cyprinus carpio Linnaeus, 1758: influence of age on spermatogenesis and fertilisation parameters

“…The age of broodstock also affects the success of sperm storage. According to Tempero et al (2006), age at maturity in common carp is related to latitude and sex. They also stated that males mature before females and fish mature earlier at low latitudes compared to higher latitudes.…”