Water Gardening: Do I have bad luck or is this normal???, 1 by WNYwillieB

WNYwillieB wrote:
When I was in grade / high school, I became very interested in tropical fish. I had many aquariums, building into breeding them, eventually brackish and salt water tanks.

Koi ponding is new to me, but a fish tank is a fish "tank," no?

While more temperamental than fresh water aquariums, they are similar to salt water in that the water has to go through nitrate cycles a couple of times to season it for adding fish. In Salt Water tanks, that means a couple cheap damsel fish to, unfortunately, "sacrifice to the process."

For the pond, I used "Rescued Feeders," as I call them, to season the water. Bought 50 and hoped for the best.

The first couple weeks I would lose maybe one or two every other day or so, but since then none have perished [insert wood knocking here!] I only add 2 or 3 at a time and now the pond has 8 Koi.

Cost of rescued feeders, $10.00 for all 50.

Here is Butters surrounded by most of the surviving feeder rescues .... which, as you can see is probably 35 or more. The three other orange / yellow? koi are also mixed in there.