Naughty Fish

As I have discussed many times, there was talk that young koi could be given to cannibalism if there was too much size disparity among them.

Every day I take one of the larger babies from the hexagon aquarium and move him to the rectangular one reserved for the bigger kids. Today I actually netted two. Then I went back to do some maintenance on the hexagon aquarium and I still don't believe what I saw!

One of the bigger guys, not huge just bigger, was swimming around with a baby koi sticking out of his naughty mouth. Just the front half of the little guy was sticking out and his eyes looked so scared! And the culprit had the unmitigated gall to look surprised. Like he couldn't figure out how that baby got in his mouth.

I got my net and went after him with single minded purpose. I would not take my eyes off him until I caught him and when I did, there was no baby fish in his mouth. He must have been so surprised at getting caught that he spit it out.

Just now I went back to be sure there wasn't still a dark-colored big guy swimming around with a baby sticking out of his mouth and to my shock, there was another fish swimming around with a baby with scared looking eyes sticking out of his mouth. This one was gold though so I know it wasn't the same one. And when I caught him, he too spit out the baby.

Now I'm afraid I know what happened to this unusually marked little beauty that I haven't seen for awhile.


After all I've done for them, this is the thanks I get. Well, I moved them and now they're little fish in a big fish aquarium instead of vice versa. I hope they know why they're there and I hope it teaches the rest of the bigger guys in the hexagon aquarium a lesson.

I'll still feed everybody 5 times a day BUT now I'll be watching them very closely.