Where Have All The Fishies Gone?

As I've reported extensively, we had our long awaited koi spawning on June 28th. Since then, a good deal of our time and effort has been focused on bringing these little tiny, fragile babies to adulthood. We suffered extensive losses that I talked about on July 28th but after that the numbers seemed to stabilize quite nicely.

Then we went on our short vacation and came back to find that one of the tubs outside has once again suffered significant losses. In fact, when I first checked on it, I was hard pressed to find more than 2 or 3 babies in it where there had been a minimum of 50 or 60. We had very responsible, dedicated caretakers and they reported that the tub was never left uncovered but that they, too had noticed declining number in that tub.

So I studied it very carefully. I was trying to find more than the 2 or 3 babies that I had initially seen when I saw something else. A monster if you will. A true mutant. He slid so swiftly and stealthily from one hiding place to the next that I almost didn't believe I had really seen him. He was easily 10 times bigger than the biggest babies we had until then. And all of a sudden the mystery was solved.

I had read that cannibalism could be an issue with these guys if the sizes became too disparate but I'd not seen any evidence of that being a problem...yet. But now I knew where all the little fishies had gone and I knew why Big Daddy was growing disproportionaly compared to the rest of the babies. He was feasting on his brothers and sisters. That fat bastard!

It was a task but I finally captured him. You might think that he was summarily executed but hold your horses. A fast growing koi is a koi with a great attribute and rather than punish him, he was to be rewarded. I removed the large goldfish from the goldfish pond and put him in with the baby goldfish. If he feasts on them, it's okay because I don't have much love for goldfish - only koi. But he won't because most of them are about the same size as him. So he's safe from big fish eating him and he's in an environment where he should continue to grow fast.

After I captured him, I left him in this bucket while I tried to figure out what do do with him:

Later on I checked on him and he had seemed to have disappeared. I had to look closely to see that he had cloaked himself with the one leaf in the bucket. See how smart and wily he is?


Now I know where all the fishies have gone and I know that I have one smart, wily, fat bastard to nurture in place of about 40 babies. But I'm just gonna call him Big Daddy from now on.

Oh and don't forget to leave a comment in yesterday's post for a chance at those valuable prizes that I'm offering to celebrate my 100th post anniversary. Hurry 'cause so far all the entrants have a whopping one in five chance of winning!