Wow, those are two goldfish that have great stories to tell.
I had to clean the bottom of mine again because this time of year all our evergreen trees put on new leaves. therefore, they drop a bundle of old leaves. And we have had wind. And my mesquite tree is in pollen bloom, so the pollen is also blowing everywhere.
Ponds 2013 II
I am so happy. I know they are only two of the original 12 but still - to have any survive makes me feel so good
I am thrilled they survived too!
Amazing how it brightens me up to go out and see them swimming around. Walmart has some interesting koi about 3" long. I guess I might go and get two or three just for grins. At least it will take them a while to grow to a size that seems to spell doom for my fish. Maybe by then I can figure out what the problem is. Although honestly some that died this winter weren't all that big either. No idea.
Well, if they survived the PP treatments, they too are disease free at this point! :)
LOL. Well, another presented itself today. FOUR fish. One fish, Two fish, Three Fish, Four Fish --- for Dr. Suess Fans. I am absolutely amazed. Damien thinks that the PP didn't make it into the deep caves. Or the dose was too light to affect them. Either way I am soooooo happy some of my fishies survived.
I am too. That is exciting! Yay!
Yes, a lighter dose of PP can be used with your fish in the water, it will kill parastites etc. If they survived what you put in, it still killed a good bit of the bad guys, enough to begin a healthy water cycle again. Your fish should be parasite free for spring from the treatment.
That is good news then. oh, and another popped out of the caves last night. Four fish. I really am amazed. Would have sworn all were accounted for but maybe one or at the most two by corpses. Well, onward and upward.
Happy Mothers Day! Going over to my son's shortly for Mother's Day. I made his favorite cookies, so I am hoping he enjoys them. My daughter is working long strange hours, so I will probably get a short call from her while she is on break.
What are you all doing for Mothers' Day?
Happy Mother's Day to you all also. My daughter and her boyfriend are returning from a fun trip to Homer and are taking me and Josh's Mom out to dinner. It rained last night which freshened up the yard. Got one raised bed planted, two to go but the rain may slow me up a little. I hope you all have daffy's and tulips and crocus popping everywhere to make it a festive day.
I finally got the Micoblift PL. into the pond. I am retired but still not enough hours in the day. My granddaughter (21 years of age) and grandson (8 years old) helped me plant some radishes and bib lettuce and put the stuff in the pond.
It was hilarious because it smell like rotten eggs and my granddaughters is such a girl's girl.
I checked this am and it does look clearer. I have to skim it every morning because my mesquite tree is dropping pollen constantly.
Not doing much today bu I usually do not do much on Sundays. A deal I made with my DH years ago.
Have a wonderful Mother's Day and Sunday. Sharon
That's interesting. I also have a 20 year old granddaughter and a 10 year old grandson. Interesting spacing. Brendan was a total surprise. I broke down and bought three koi and one shebunkin from Walmart. Then inadvertently stepped on the shebunkin while in the pond. Wouldn't even try to explain how that happened. I put him on a ledge in the water to keep an eye on him and when I went back he was gone. Probably wobbled off to die. Poor Bunky. And he was so lively.
Mary
What??!? How does a fish get stepped on in the pond?
Sharon - the ML does smell like rotten eggs, but I vaguely remember that it was made from all natural things - nothing artificial.
I just skimmed cherry petals from the pond. More coming and we are supposed to get windy. I will have to keep an eye on things until the Kwanzen cherry is finished dropping petals - then all should be clear until fall when the trees start to lose their leaves.
They sell dry riparian tree leaves for ponds and aquariums. You could start a business with those leaves you get out of the pond. A paying hobby, LOL.
In the Southwest desert, leaves thin out because of th heat. A way Mother Nature keeps the trees from stressing. I have two beautiful African Sumac in the back landscape, one Japanese Blueberry, one Mesquite, one Strawberry tree and my neighbors pine trees. We are suppose to be 101 degrees tomorrow. The sumac especially are shedding leaves big time. They are lucky I am a tree hugger.
There are 5 grandchildren in our daughter's family. Two girls, 3 boys. Hannah, 21. Sarah, 20, Corbin 16. Ethan 15 and Jacob 8. Yes, Jacob was a surprise. The girls are 18 months apart and the two oldest boys are 18 months apart. Hannah just graduated from college and is home for the summer and is going back to get her Masters. She was coming over and little brother wanted to tag along. Because grandmother's home has ice cream treats just for them.
Hope you all had a good day.
My heavens. Sounds like a nice tribe. Well spaced out. Your daughter must have been pretty pooped out for many years. Or one of those energizer bunnies that is well organized. lol
Okay. The mystery of the stepped upon fish. I just can't let well enough alone. Ever. I bought three little koi and the shebunkin. I put them in my 30 gallon tank with my frog. I was only thinking of size not the fact that those 4" fish would crank the PH out of sight. When I realized that I knew that they had to go into the pond or die. The pond is about 46F right now. So I filled gallon zip lock bags, one for each fish and floated them in the pond. But once again was worried about PH and oxygen, so I got a large net (18" deep by 24" across) and hung it in the pond in the pond on the surface. Figuring that the water would be warmer there as the sun came around. I put the fish in there out of the bags as they had all equalized in temp. They all sort of fell to the bottom although if I moved the net they swam around for a bit. I figured they were sort of going dormant. The Shebunkin was not affected at all. So I let him out. He went to the bottom of the pond and sort of sat there and I worried I shouldn't have done that, but when I tried to catch him he went behind a big stone laying just below the skimmer. Then I worried he would get stuck and die. I let the others go in the meantime. So on with the waders and into the pond. I was able to tilt the stone up and swish the water around. I glimpsed him once before I lost site of him in the detritus that came from under the stone. I was afraid to drop the stone for fear he was still under it and I would squish him, but had no choice. As I let it go and stepped back I felt my foot landing on something soft. Uh huh. The shebunkin was behind me. I caught him and he had red in several spots, and I figured he was a goner. I had lifted my foot before totally dropping my weight on it, but still. So I laid him on a ledge. He was moving if I tickled him but not otherwise. Then he was gone when I got back. I have no doubt he wiggled off to die. I feel just rotten. And sooooo angry with myself that I cannot just let things alone. Just have to keep tweaking and messing. Comes of doing things I shouldn't do in the first place.
Oh Mary - I am so sorry. I'll bet you feel horrible. I would. I feel so badly. I think we all try to do things to make them better and it backfires on us from time to time.
Yeah. And he was the feistiest of the four fish. So I got three more shebunkin and will stay out of the pond til they are safely away. lol. Maybe they can find their friend and nurse him to health.
Spent Mothers Day with youngest dgt. at her ranch in N. Fl. After church lots of kids came over to get a free baby pig. They had 35 and are trying to give them away as fast as possible. My SIL catches them in a large dip net-washes them off and hands them to the kids. Their parents said they wanted to raise them for the freezer but the way some of those kids acted I'll bet they will become pets. We rode the woods on their 4 wheeler and enjoyed seeing all the land they had gotten cleared this year and planted into grass for their cows. He planted 5 acres into corn and the crows picked up the plants and left them but ate the seeds. Bugger birds.
My SIL is a great cook and barbecued some steaks from their cows and boy was it good.
Now I'm home again and back to the real world of cruddy ponds and and a pool to keep going with the cleanup for this summer. Many plants are blooming and we are hoping for more rain.
Forgot to mention, I got a Sylvania digital photo frame with 123 pics of there trip to England and showed all places where my mom was raised and they were also in the church she was baptised in at 1 month old. My dgt. knew every little detail of the history of Cornwall and told me as the pictures were also on her computer. Really enjoyed that.
Bye for now. Bonnie
Hope everyone had a happy Mothers Day.
My heavens Bonnie. You are Welsh. How very cool.
It is very cool - I love history myself. Sounds like you had a wonderful time, Bonnie.
OH, the fish I bought at Walmart (3 4" koi and 4 shebunkin [less the one I stepped on]) have all been out and about. The cold water doesn't seem to phase them. They may be small but they are MIGHTY!!! lol I will oxygenate the pond like made this winter.
I have posted two photos. Second one is the pond this afternoon. I had already skimmed it once. First one is showing you the tree and how much is still waiting to fall. Loading changed placement of photos.
Mary - that is great that the cold doesn't seem to bother them. What do you think the water temps are?
Sharon - How long does it typically take for the tree to be free from the falling leaves? DH and I have been skimming cherrry blossoms from ours. It seems like this year it is taking forever to skim them out.
Don't feel so bad now knowing that I'm not the only who dips out leaves so much.
Finally cleaned all the filters the other day and sure helped ponds clear up. I am still going to pump a lot out and put in Michroblift for summer start up but that will have to wait. Plants in ponds have gotton so big they all need to be split and put some in other pots.
Eyes are really bothering me this morning so I'll quit writing for now. After Cal. trip I'll be so glad to get eye surgery done on June 18.
Take care all and happy ponding. Especially to Oberon and her new fish.
Bonnie
The pond is running around 45 at night and 55 in the day. I got a new pond thermometer so am checking daily again.
Sad day....my 24" Ki Utsuri jumped the pond today. When I found it, it was still alive, but missing most of it's scales and had been flopping around on the searing hot deck for while. I put it in a salt bath to make a slime coat since she had many abrasions, and for a while, she looked ok and swam around. When I checked on her an hour later, she was a goner.... Drats, I'm really bummed, she was filled with eggs, and I was hoping for some really pretty fry from her and a white butterfly male. ugh....
Oh my heavens. That is really rotten. Was it too hot in the pond?? I know that koi jump but can't imagine what would make it jump out of the pond for no reason. Poor fish. Poor Mary. :(
The air is hot, but the water temps are still pretty cool....so I don't think it was that. I haven't had any spawning yet this year, so I thought maybe they'd wait until fall, now that the air temps are hot, but maybe someone was chasing her? Just don't know.... :(
MM - I am so sorry. It is so hard when we lose them.
She was just soooo big and healthy! I hate to lose the big ones!
MM, so sorry. I have never had a fish jump out of the pond. Is that common?
Some one, about a year ago, changed the valve on the filter and turned on the vacuum. Nothing was in the outlet so one of my 20 year old fish got his mouth stuck in the outlet. When we purchased him many years ago he was a feeder goldfish. We bought 4 because the grand-kids did not want bigger fish to eat them. When we moved into this home 13 years ago, we had two very large one left. One just totally disappeared. Probably a hawk.
I have four new fish that my sister purchased when she was her the first part of April. Two small Koi and two shebunkins. Since I skim the pond at least 3 times a day we are all becoming friends. The two smaller Koi have each picked out a large Koi to follow.
As fa as the Mesquite tree, we had a freeze this winter, so it is extra heavy in pollen this year. Next comes the seed pods which then dry and fall. Pollen should be another week and the seed pods are large so they are not that big of a problem. I planted the tree there so I cannot complain.
Frankly I cannot even imagine a 2' koi. Well, I have seen some whoppers in small lakes and ponds. A small lake around a Buddhist monastery had scads of them, some even longer. Ravenous fellows.
It's not overly common for them to jump....it happens when they have parasites (which mine don't, they've been overly treated this spring) or when males chase them for breeding (I haven't noticed them spawning, but it usually happens at 4 or 5:00am.)
I DO have several fish with altered lips, due to their insistance on looking into the intake valve of the pump. What goobers....lovely fish with flappy lips....sigh... I've learned to keep smaller grates on the intake, even if it means netting the pond more often...I found one poor thing with her entire head stuck in the intake! Her lips were sucked into a whole new direction, lol, but she survived the ordeal! 2 years later, and she's a lovely orange hariwake butterfly, with gorgeous fins, but one droopy lip. :)
Well, my pond hasn't had a Buddhist visitor as of yet, but I do have some larger koi. :)
Funny-,I haven't had any Buddhist visitors either. Not a bad thing.
The hawks make me nervous with the fish. We have them all over the place.
Mary, that is hysterical about the intake pipe. I never would have thought they would be interested unless they associate it with fry getting sucked in there after spawning.
M. Mary sorry for your loss. Bummer. Glad you mentioned distorted lips. I had one and it looked all stretched out a few months ago but now is back to normal. I think from sucjing on the grate on skimmer where food sometimes congregates. I shut all pumps off while feeding and then turn back on. All the fish in larger pond now come right up to spot where I usually feed no matter who walks on the walkway. Pigs. Got them some frozen pease this week so will give them a treat this afternoon. I will thaw first of course.
Yesterday Jeff brought over and put in old pond (after treating) a 22 inch pleco he found in river he had been fishing in. Looks kind of like brown zigzag markings. Hope he eats algae like crazy. I don't want any foreigners in the pond with the butterflys. The 2 large gold ones are really fat now. They are about 5 yrs. old. Who knows maybe they have eggs.
Happy ponding all.
Bonnie