Koi fish varieties look like an impossible list until you learn that almost every koi is built from the same three parts: a ground colour, a pattern laid over it, and a scale type. Read those three in order and you can name most fish in a pond in about four seconds. This guide covers the varieties we import and sell, photographed here as our own fish, with what separates a good example from a mediocre one and which one we think you should buy first.
Short answer: Learn the Gosanke first: Kohaku (red on white), Taisho Sanke (red plus small black spots on white), and Showa Sanshoku (red and white over a black body). Every other class is a variation on ground colour, pattern or scalation. Doitsu and Ginrin are scale types, not varieties, and can appear on almost any fish. Want a koi that hand-feeds within a month? Buy a Chagoi. Want to show? Buy Gosanke.
How to read a koi in three steps
Step 1: find the ground colour
Look past the pattern and ask what colour the fish would be if you erased the markings. White (shiroji) puts you in the Kohaku, Sanke, Bekko or Koromo neighbourhood. Black (sumi) as the base means Showa or Utsurimono. Blue-grey means Asagi or Shusui. Plain brown, tea or grey means Chagoi or a relative. A metallic sheen over the whole body moves you into the Hikari classes.
Step 2: read the pattern
Count the colours and note where they sit. Red on white is Kohaku. Black as small isolated spots above the lateral line, on white with red, is Sanke. Black as broad bands wrapping under the belly and reaching the head is Showa. One colour over black is Utsurimono. Black spots on a solid coloured body is Bekko. A net-like overlay is Asagi, Koromo or Goshiki, depending on what the net sits on.
Step 3: check the scalation
This is the step beginners skip, and it is why so many online lists get it wrong. A koi is either normally scaled (wagoi), German scaled (doitsu: a mostly bare body with a row of large mirror scales along the dorsal line), or ginrin, meaning the scales carry a reflective sparkle. Scalation cuts across the whole variety chart. A Kohaku can be Doitsu, Ginrin, both or neither, and it is still a Kohaku. Listing "Doitsu" and "Ginrin" as varieties alongside Kohaku and Showa mixes two different axes.
Japanese shows sort every entry into a fixed set of judging classes, usually between 13 and 16 depending on the organisation. The classes below are the ones you will meet in almost any of them, and our koi variety encyclopedia holds the full list with pronunciation and side-by-side comparisons.
The Gosanke: the three koi fish varieties most buyers want
Gosanke means "the big three": Kohaku, Taisho Sanke and Showa Sanshoku. They dominate Japanese shows and they are the hardest to get right. A cheap Gosanke usually looks cheap, and that is not snobbery: with only two or three colours, a fault has nowhere to hide.
Kohaku: red on white
Two colours, and the oldest of the Gosanke. The white should be the white of a new refrigerator, not cream and not pink. The red (hi) should be even in depth from head to tail, thick enough that you cannot see scale outlines through it, and it should stop cleanly. That trailing edge is kiwa, and on a good fish it looks cut with a blade. The leading edge, sashi, is allowed to be softer, because that is where new colour advances as the fish grows.
Judge the pattern for balance rather than symmetry. Red should begin on the head and finish before the tail joint, leaving white at the back, and the fins should be white. Avoid a fish whose red is one continuous slab down the spine, and avoid one whose head pattern runs into the eyes. In our Kohaku collection, put a $200 tosai next to a $2,000 nisai; the difference in kiwa shows in the thumbnails.
Taisho Sanke: red and white with black accents
A Sanke is a Kohaku that has been given black spots. Everything you look for in a Kohaku still applies, and the black (sumi) is judged on top of it. Good Sanke sumi is glossy, sits above the lateral line, and punctuates the pattern rather than competing with it. Black on the head is a fault, and pectoral fins should be clean white or carry a few thin stripes.
Sumi in Sanke can be slow to arrive, which makes young Sanke a gamble and adult Sanke expensive. If you want a fish that will look roughly the same in three years, buy the adult. Our Sanke collection lists size and age on every fish.
Showa Sanshoku: red and white over black
Showa reverses the logic. The base is black, and red and white are laid over it. Sumi appears as wide bands and wedges that wrap around the body and cross below the lateral line, and it is welcome on the head, where a bold sumi wedge is a feature rather than a fault. Look for motoguro, a solid block of black at the base of the pectoral fins. It is the most reliable Showa marker there is.
The Sanke-versus-Showa confusion costs beginners real money, so here is the short version. Black on the head, or black wrapping under the belly, means Showa. Black as small isolated spots on the back only, with a clean white face, means Sanke. Sanke black is an accent; Showa black is structural. See what is swimming now in our Showa collection.
From the shop: The question we hear most at the pens in San Jose is "is this one a Sanke or a Showa?" The answer is nearly always in the pectoral fins. Ask us to net the fish and tip it: a solid black thumbprint where the fin meets the body means Showa.
Utsurimono and Bekko: black koi and black-marked koi
Utsurimono is a black koi carrying exactly one other colour: white gives Shiro Utsuri, red gives Hi Utsuri, yellow gives Ki Utsuri. That is the entire class. Ki Utsuri is not a separate variety sitting next to Utsurimono; it is one of the three fish inside it. Shiro Utsuri is the most common and the easiest to keep looking good, because there is no red to fade.
What to look for: sumi that is deep and even rather than grey or blotchy, a roughly even balance between the two colours, motoguro in the pectorals, and sumi reaching the head. Hi Utsuri and Ki Utsuri are hard to find in good quality.
Bekko inverts the relationship: a solid white, red or yellow body with black sitting on it as scattered spots. Shiro Bekko is essentially a Sanke with the red removed. It is quiet, underrated and often a bargain, because it lacks the drama that drives auction prices. Neither class has its own collection here, so start from the Japanese koi in stock.
Asagi and Shusui: the blue koi
Asagi is the oldest recognised variety in the hobby and the one most often described wrong. The defining feature is the reticulation: five or six rows of blue scales, each with a darker centre and a pale rim, forming an even net across the back. That net is the judging criterion. Beneath it, red runs along the sides from the lateral line downward, onto the cheeks and jaw, and into the pectoral fin joints. The head should be clean pale blue to near-white with no shadowing, the hardest part to find.
Shusui is the doitsu form of Asagi, created in the early 1900s by crossing Asagi with German mirror carp. Instead of a full net you get bare blue-grey skin, a neat row of large dark-blue scales running down the dorsal line from head to tail, often a second row along the lateral line, and red rising up the flanks and cheeks. Because the skin is exposed, one missing scale in the dorsal row drops a Shusui down the placings. Our breeder profiles show which Japanese houses specialise in these.
Koromo and Goshiki: the robed koi
Koromo means robe, and the robe is the point. A Koromo is a Kohaku underneath: white body, red pattern. Over the red plates only, a blue or black reticulation appears, one crescent per scale edge, as if a net had been laid across the red and nowhere else. The white stays white. Getting this backwards is the most common error in variety lists, and the fish it accidentally describes is an Asagi.
Ai Goromo carries blue crescents, Budo Goromo a darker purple overlay resembling grapes, Sumi Goromo something heavier and blacker. Koromo appeared in the 1950s from crossing Kohaku with Asagi, the same parentage that produced Goshiki, and the two are judged together at most shows.
Goshiki means five colours: white, red, black, light blue and dark blue. The practical difference from Koromo is where the netting goes. Netting confined to the red is Koromo; netting that also spreads across the white ground is Goshiki. As juveniles the two are nearly impossible to separate, and Goshiki reticulation darkens with age, so a delicate-looking young fish can mature much heavier than you expected. Good examples of both turn up in our champion-grade Signature collection.
Metallic koi: Ogon, Hariwake and Kikokuryu
Metallics split into two groups. Hikarimuji are single-colour metallics with no pattern: Yamabuki Ogon is yellow-gold, Platinum Ogon is metallic white, and Matsuba varieties add a dark pine-cone marking in each scale. Hikarimoyo carry a second colour in a pattern, which is where Hariwake and Kujaku sit.
Single-colour metallics are judged almost entirely on lustre, evenness and body shape, so nothing distracts from a dull patch or a crooked spine. In exchange they are cheap to buy well, and they read beautifully in dark-bottomed ponds.
Hariwake is metallic white with yellow or orange patches. Kujaku adds Matsuba scale reticulation and red markings, and it is one of the most reliably attractive fish for a garden pond. Work from our individually photographed koi, where every fish is shot from above under the same lights.
Kikokuryu is the metallic version of Kumonryu, the doitsu black-and-white dragon fish whose pattern shifts with water temperature and season. One can be almost entirely black in summer and mostly white the next year.
Kawarimono: the catch-all class, and where the friendliest koi live
Kawarimono, sometimes written Kawarigoi, is the class for every non-metallic koi that is recognised and named but fits nowhere else. It is not a dumping ground for mongrels; some of the most useful fish in the hobby live here.
Chagoi is a plain tea-brown or bronze koi with no pattern at all, and it is the fish we recommend more than any other. Chagoi grow fast, grow enormous, and are famously greedy and fearless. Put one in a pond of nervous Gosanke and within a few weeks the whole pond feeds at the surface, because the Chagoi taught them it was safe. Soragoi is the grey-blue equivalent and behaves the same.
Ochiba Shigure crosses Chagoi toward Soragoi or Asagi, producing bronze and mustard patterning over a grey-blue body. The name refers to autumn leaves drifting on water, one of the few koi names where the poetry matches the fish. Ochiba inherit the Chagoi temperament, which is most of the reason to buy one.
Benigoi is solid deep red from nose to tail. Matsukawabake is black and white, and its pattern genuinely changes with water temperature. Karasugoi is near-solid black; Hajiro is black with white fin tips. Chagoi and Ochiba often sell in mixed lots, and our handpicked koi groups are the cheapest sensible way to add three or four at once.
Tancho: one red spot, its own class
Tancho is less a variety than a pattern condition that earns its own show class: a single red marking on the head and no red anywhere else. Tancho Kohaku is the classic; Tancho Sanke and Tancho Showa keep their black patterns while giving up all body red.
Judging is brutally simple. The spot should be round, centred between the eyes, not touching or running past them, deep even red, with a clean edge. A slightly oval or offset marking is common and drops the value fast. The resemblance to the Japanese flag and to the red-crowned crane (also called tancho) is why these fish carry a premium two colours would not otherwise justify.
Doitsu and Ginrin: scale types, not varieties
Doitsu koi descend from German mirror and leather carp brought to Japan in the early twentieth century. The body is largely bare, with a row of enlarged mirror scales along the dorsal line and sometimes the lateral line. With no scale edges to blur the boundaries, doitsu patterns look sharper than the same pattern on a scaled fish. One misaligned scale is glaring, though.
Ginrin, short for Kinginrin, means silver and gold scales: each affected scale carries a deposit that reflects light like a sequin. This is a completely separate trait from doitsu, and the two get confused constantly because both get described as "shiny scales". They can appear on the same fish, and both attach to a variety rather than replacing it, so Doitsu Ginrin Showa describes one fish. Judges want ginrin even and running in clean rows; random scattered sparkle is worth less than a symmetrical spread.
Butterfly koi: beautiful, and honestly not nishikigoi
Butterfly koi, also called Hirenaga or longfin koi, came from a Japanese fisheries programme that began breeding them in 1980, after Crown Prince Akihito suggested crossing long-finned Indonesian carp with Japanese stock. They are gorgeous in motion, hardy and usually inexpensive.
Buy one knowing this: they are not accepted for judging in traditional Japanese nishikigoi shows. The Zen Nippon Airinkai has excluded them for decades, because their fin-to-body proportions sit far outside nishikigoi standards. Plenty of well-known Japanese breeders produce them anyway, and a butterfly koi in a garden pond owes nobody an apology. Just do not spend show money on one expecting a show result.
What koi actually symbolise, and what the internet made up
The real story is older than koi. In Chinese mythology, carp swim up the Yellow River toward a waterfall at Longmen, the Dragon Gate, and any carp with the strength to leap it becomes a dragon. The idiom "a carp leaping the Dragon Gate" came to stand for sudden advancement, especially success in the imperial examinations. It reached Japan as toryumon, and the same image drives koi no takinobori, the carp climbing the waterfall. It is why koinobori carp streamers fly over Japanese houses on 5 May for Children's Day: black for the father, red for the mother, blue and green for the children.
Perseverance, strength through adversity and family aspiration are genuinely traditional, and longevity and good fortune are widely held associations across East Asia. Those are fair to repeat. The elaborate colour-by-colour charts online are a different matter. "Gold means wealth, black means the father overcoming obstacles, blue means a son" is largely a Western, feng-shui-adjacent embellishment assembled long after these varieties were bred, and the assignments contradict each other from one source to the next. Nishikigoi were developed by nineteenth-century rice farmers in Niigata selecting colour mutations out of food carp. Enjoy the symbolism, but do not buy a $2,000 fish because a blog said Kohaku brings career success. Buy it because the kiwa is sharp.
Which koi variety should you buy first
First pond? Buy a Chagoi or an Ochiba Shigure. Not because they are the prettiest fish in the shop, but because they will eat from your hand inside a month and drag every other fish up to the surface with them. A pond of shy koi is a pond you never really see. Chagoi also grow faster than almost anything else, so you find out quickly whether your filtration keeps up.
Planning to show? Buy Gosanke, and buy fewer of them. Three good Kohaku teach you more than fifteen mixed fish. Expect to spend real money: on our own listings, tosai Kohaku start around $150 and show-grade adults run into the thousands.
Pond under 1,500 gallons? Buy metallics and Kawarimono. Ogon, Hariwake, Kujaku, Bekko and Shiro Utsuri hold their looks at moderate size, cost less than Gosanke of equal quality, and do not punish a pond that will never grow a 30-inch fish.
Skip the variety you cannot see. This is the advice that saves people the most money. Heavily reticulated fish read poorly in deep, green or planted water, and blue-grey fish vanish against a black liner. If your pond is four feet deep with algae-tinted water, a $900 Ai Goromo looks like a shadow and a $150 Yamabuki Ogon looks like treasure. Buy for your water, not for the photograph.
Whatever you start with, buy fewer fish than you want. Two koi that keep growing beat six that stall. When your order arrives, follow our guide to introducing new koi to your pond; if anything goes wrong in transit, the Live Arrival and 7-Day Health Guarantee covers shipping-stress losses on a photo and a short video.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Sanke and Showa koi?
Sanke is a white koi with a red pattern and small black spots that sit above the lateral line, and its head carries no black. Showa is a black koi with red and white laid over it, so black appears on the head and wraps around the body below the lateral line. Check the pectoral fins: a solid black block at the fin base, called motoguro, means Showa.
Are Doitsu and Ginrin koi varieties?
No. Both are scale types that can occur on almost any variety. Doitsu means a largely scaleless body with a row of large mirror scales along the back. Ginrin means individual scales carry a reflective sparkle. A single fish can be a Ginrin Doitsu Kohaku, and it is still classified as a Kohaku with two scalation traits described.
Do koi patterns change as the fish grows?
Yes, substantially. Red can spread or recede at the edges, black in Sanke and Showa often takes two to four years to finish emerging, and Goshiki reticulation darkens with age. Metallic lustre is far more stable. This is why nisai and sansai fish cost more than tosai: you are paying to remove guesswork.
Are butterfly koi recognised in Japanese koi shows?
No. The Zen Nippon Airinkai has excluded longfin koi from competitive judging for many years because their fin proportions fall outside nishikigoi standards. They are still bred by well-known Japanese breeders and they make perfectly good pond fish. If show placings matter to you, buy standard-finned koi instead.
How much should a good koi cost?
Tosai from named Japanese breeders generally start in the low hundreds, mid-grade nisai run several hundred to low thousands, and show-quality adult Gosanke go well beyond that. Price tracks breeder, age, size and how much guesswork has been removed for you. Our tosai collection is the entry point.