sunnyg....Oh ye of little faith,lol.......TRUST me, I have the smallest postage stamp Florida yard there is! I just decided grass is just too hard to deal with when the temps get to 97 and there's no rain in sight for months..... I don'd mind if you blame, me, it makes me feel like a rebel! :D I use cement half blocks as planters AFTER I soak them in a tubby of water for about a month, to build a little algae and leech out some of the bad ph.... Fish can't tip them over or rummage through your plant roots. I put the plant in, fill it with river pebbles to stabalize, and let them grow! I had really good luck with the all purple elephant ears and the umbrella palms. Both provided a lot of shade for the fish, without taking up water space. They also looked great in the back yard.
What is going on in your pond?
I decided to put one of those watering troughs for cattle in the greenhouse this winter and am growing the tropicals in there...not to mention it provides the perfect humidity in there...it's stocked with mosquito fish ...(minnows from Austin) but I bet a lovely and exotic Koi would look particularly nice in it.....but then..would there be any plants left!?
A small koi would pick, but not do over-kill on your plants. They DO need a much higher level of oxygen and filtration than goldfish though.
Really? I have a huge pump in it to produce the humidity in the green house...so I have it covered...is there such thing as a small Koi? do yours get bigger than the ones in the photos? They aren't that big..
Mary: I loved all the fish pictures. Thank you for my daily fix. I was thinking of driving an hour away to walk around a huge garden center with greenhouses and ponds just to "play" and think about spring.
Regarding the spawn: Mail out the eggs like Bonnie of "Bonnies Plants and fish does. . .
SunnyG: Love your pictures as well. Are all your fish koi? Those two with all the spots are so interesting looking. I never saw any like that before. Nice!
Yes...MerryMary..mail out the eggs...uh huh..yeah......There's a little nursery in the green house waiting...LOL
Ki Bekko ,Orange Matsuba butterfly ...how big do these get?
You need to enter this photo in a contest..it's wonderful
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=6005620
what was that ebay site again..and do they send eggs..I was wondering how one orders fish from the internet!
This message was edited Jan 14, 2009 7:00 PM
Thanks so much RJ! :-) I had a blast taking pics of the fish this summer. I fed them with one hand, and snapped pics with the other. I'm amazed my camera even survived several knocks and quick (partial) dips in the pond. LOL.
MM, the spotted fish are actually shubunkin goldfish. They are characters in their own right, and will eat out of my hand quite readily. The big orange and white fish was supposed to be a little common goldfish. He was half the size of the shubunkins (tiny) when I got him, but he's now outgrown all of the fish, and is kind of goofy and goofy-looking. I don't what he is, really, but he's quite amusing.
MerryMarry, I am now even more interested in seeing your set-up, since your yard is so small. I was planning on expanding my tiny in-ground pond this year, but I don't think it's in the finances. I have waaay too many photos from this summer, but I'll try and hunt up some pics of my "yard" (I live in a townhouse).
I leave in the morning for Baltimore, but I'll take some more pics when I return. What a time to leave Florida, when it's freezing up there! We actually will have some short freezes (1-2 hours) while I'm gone, so there go the plants!
I have a submersible pump, with a pressurized filter (with UV) for each pond. I run 2 pressurized filters on the larger pond. They are lined ponds, so I dont deal with mud or anything like that. I also use an enzyme, to keep the nasties starved from deveolping. I put my fish food in the large plastic pretzel tubbies, and add a 1/2 cup of metamormolite clay (shaken, not stirred, joke...) and it keeps the fish healthy and their immune systems strong. It also enhances their color a bit.
The filters I'm talking about are only the size of a kitchen trash can.
Mary: When you get a chance can you post pictures of your two pressured filters on the big pond. I need to see how they are set up.
Having serious Koi withdrawal! Even though I can see them the fish of course do not do much this time of year. Had to go the a chinese resturaunt today -- not for the food but because they have a large indoor koi pond in one corner of the room. I got my food which sat there for several minutes 'cause I was over playing with the koi (and getting dirty looks from the staff for putting my hand down to pet them) LOL
My Koi were out earlier this week and are back in hiding as the temps are cooler. Today topped to 47 deg but we had sunshine & blue skies.Nice change from the drizzly fog that has been hanging around all week. I was cleaning out the filter basket today and found a HUGE frog at the bottom resting. I took him out and placed in on the ground for a while. He was in no hurry to get away. Had a nice conversation (one sided of course) with him. Put him back into the pond and he swam away but had a hard time finding a new hiding spot. He was to big for most of the rock crevices. He finally found a good spot. Sure wish I had my camera. He was a big boy!
Blue skies...not a cloud in sight...sooooooooo nice!
BeaHive - Duck! I'm pitching slush chunks at you!
Snapple...so sorry with the weather you all are having. We had our artic blast in December..It was not fun expecially for me being from
CA most of my life. My Niece is away at college in your fine state.
When she started there in 2006 she had no coat! (from CA) She e-mailed me to tell me how cold she was. Her mother did not have the money to give at the time, so good old Aunt Bea sent her a nice down coat from LL Bean. One of my SIL is from Ohio and now resides in Hawaii with my brother and their son. Sure wish I was in Hawaii right now!
I'm sure your neice really, really appreciated that coat Aunt Bea. How wise of your SIL and her spouse to go to Hawaii. I have a step daughter who moved from here to live in San Diego. She's been there since she graduated from nursing school in 1988. She got her cap, packed her car and said for us to be sure to visit 'cause she wasn't coming back. We visit every chance we can. Her Dad and I just stick it out here, but at times like this winter we seriously question why. LOL Even though it's late in the evening here and dark out, I just trudged through 14" of snow to the koi pond to check on the deicer. I monitor the water temp remotely and the temp was the lowest I've seen it in 8 winters, 37, so I wasn't sure the deicer was working. It is. It just can't keep up with this kind of cold. Normally it holds the water at 40.
So while I try to enjoy the sparkle of new fallen snow, crystal icicles catching the sun and a fiery red Cardinal perched on a snow laden evergreen branch you go ahead and enjoy those amazing blue skys and the croak of a frog. I would trade places!
Sunny-I've been meaning to ask you-how did you get your fish to eat out of your hand? My fish are so skiddish! The one that I had who might've done this eventually died during the summer plague of 2008. I would love it if they came close to me let alone eat out of my hand. Please tell me your secrets!
Linda
Linda, I wish I could say that I'm the "fish whisperer," but the truth of the matter is they started eating out of my hand without much prompting. We got three shubunkins pretty soon after building the above ground pond, as we ended up with a huge mosquito larvae population while letting the pond mature, and had to do something asap. The koi somehow slipped into the mix (not my fault, I'll say it again ;-)), a week or two later. I think a few days after that, I could feed all of them by holding each pellet in my fingers. Soon afterward they were all jumping into my hands, sucking on my fingers etc. I did spend a lot of time hanging out near them (between the new fish and the new waterlilies I was totally obsessed with the pond. LOL), so I think they got pretty used to my presence, which must have helped. They associated me (or anyone else for that matter LOL) with food very quickly, and would swim over and beg for food whenever I was near the pond. When we fed or pruned the waterlilies or cleaned the filter, they would suck on the back of our hands and arms looking for food, even if they'd just been fed.
I am a newbie to this whole fish thing, and totally not up on my "fish psychology." However, it did seem that the whole "dynamic" of the school did play a part in it. We have a second tiny in-ground pond that was terrorized by raccoons, and the fish in there were always very skittish after that. When we moved the skittish fish in with the other mellow ones (to cover the pond with netting while out of town), all of the fish immediately began acting much more skittish, and this continued well after the initial adjustment period. They would all still eat out of my hands, including the newly introduced ones from the other pond who refused to do that in their former home....but instead of fearlessly jumping into my hands and hanging out for awhile, letting me pet them, etc. they all began to dart in, take the food, and dart out again. I'm not sure what will happen this year, or how they will behave, as this introduction happened late in the season. They are spending the winter all together in the above-ground pond, so we shall see. Hopefully others can add some tips for you. I do wonder if all the issues you had with your fish last year have contributed to how they are behaving now, like the raccoon issues impacted mine. The other factor I thought of, is perhaps because my pond is so small, they got used to me being near them a lot sooner, but that is just a guess :-).
Having had to handle Poppy the koi twice now - once to get him off a shelf he got stuck on while I was draining the old liner pond to change water about a month ago, then last weekend when he jumped out of his "holding bucket" when I was getting the new indoor pond ready - I just don't see the allure of touching fish!
I like it that Poppy now eats in front of me comfortably, rather than grabbing a piece of food, running to hide, then coming back up for another piece of food, but I don't think I will ever want to touch the fish regularly. I know it is necessary for emergencies, and have no problem with that, but I would much rather pet my dogs than fish. : )
Elizabeth
My koi eat from my hand. My goldfish won't have anything to do with me. I kinda enjoy the hand feeding, but it wasn't something I worked at and I don't do it every day. It was my daughter who first fed the koi by hand and informed me it could be done! It's a simple conditioning response to the need for food. The part I like is getting a close look at them. Having handled koi for injections, it's no fun when they struggle and you know you're stressing them. They are also the slipperiest things on earth and incredibly strong. You're in constant terror of having one flop out of the net onto a hard surface. Pretty stressful for both parties.
If you can do it and you like it that's great, but it is just a conditioned response to food and the absence of the fear of prey.