The Mysterious Musketeers

When everybody came home for my dad's funeral, one of our eagle-eyed Army guys spotted something strange in the big pond where all our biggo koi live. He kept insisting that he saw three, dark fish darting here and there that we didn't even know existed. Finally, everybody else saw them too. Two of them were about 3 inches long and one was about 5 inches long and they just didn't belong there. We had our first koi spawning at the end of June and these guys were WAYYYYY too big to be from that. Besides they were all dark colored and we didn't have more than one koi baby that was solid black among the thousands that hatched. So the odds were remote that there were three koi offspring in the big pond. But the question was what were they and how did they get there.

On June 14th, we took all 13 big koi out of the big pond and put them temporarily in the pond that housed just 3 fairly adult goldfish. After the big pond was cleaned and refilled we netted each one of the koi and put them back into the big pond. All I can figure out is that there must have been 3 goldfish youngsters in there that we didn't know about and that traveled to the big pond in the net with some of the big koi. After all, we always make that transport as quickly as possible and our focus was to not get any of the 3 white and/or red goldfish in the net. Black ones could have slipped in without our ever knowing it AND goldfish always start out dark colored and change when they get older. Koi always start out with colors.

So, they must have been goldfish and we had to catch them to make sure they didn't have those characteristic koi barbels (whiskers) before we let them loose in the wild. So here's the biggest mysterioso:

And the 3 inchers look just like him only smaller.

Unfortunately these three were all very cunning and wily and perfectly matched the pond liner which made them exceedingly difficult to catch. So we ended up completely draining the big pond, moving the big fish into the baby koi pond (formerly the goldfish pond) where they probably snacked happily on their 16 tiny offspring that we'd just put in there this week. But we caught those little buggers and although we didn't plan on cleaning the big pond, we essentially did and now it looks even better than it did.

So I took this picture of the big guys back home in the big pond. It's not a good picture of the fish because of the waves from the waterfall and the aerator but it's a picture that shows the clean, fresh water and the colors of the koi that reside there and are welcome there without those evil little interlopers (who weren't even invited to the big koi party).

And once again, at least for awhile, the fish world is turning in greased grooves.

Always Something With The Fish

Sometimes I think the best way to ease a worried mind is to throw yourself into something like a great big project.

So today that's what we did.

My granddaughter, her husband, and Superbaby have been staying with us and they've always taken a very gratifying interest in the koi and every aspect of koi care. They were here when we finally had our spawning and they were very instrumental in collecting so many eggs that we had such a large hatch.

So I've been musing about what to do with the babies. We have a large pond with 13 large koi. We have a smaller pond for the purpose of quarantining new fish to be sure they're disease free before introducing them to the large koi population. That pond used to have 3 grown goldfish only Then this Spring just to make the koi look bad, they started spawning like madmen or mad fish. There were so many baby goldfish in there that when you fed them the surface of the water just churned with fish. Finally we had to release the 3 parents into the wild to stop the population explosion.

Then we had the aquarium and two tubs with baby koi. And the koi are the fish I value.

When we had to find places to put the unhatched eggs back in June, we removed the 3 fish that were in the aquarium. There was one algae eater and two long, skinny, fast-as-lightening tropical fish. We put them in the goldfish pond, crossing our fingers that they would be fine as long as the weather was warm.

Today we decided that we'd take all the goldfish out of their little pond and put all the baby koi into it at least until cold weather sets in (which I realize is probably sooner than we were thinking).

So we netted all the goldfish and put them in two buckets. Big Daddy was in there (more commonly known as Fat Bastard) and we put him in the big pond with the big, honkin' koi and crossed our fingers again. Then we put two more suspected baby koi in the tubs.

Now we had two buckets teeming with baby goldfish and the two long, skinny, fast-as-lightening tropical fish who seemed to have grown significantly. We dumped the algae eater back in the aquarium assuming that he was interested in eating koi eggs and itty, bitty, tiny koi fry and not the slightly bigger little guys that are in there now. Then we came in for lunch. Before we did I noticed that a lot of the goldfish in one of the buckets were hovering near the top and I commented that I thought they needed more air. But you know me and thinking I had more time, I thought to take care of it after lunch.

When I walked back out, one of the long, skinny, fast-as-lightening tropical fish was laying on the ground, dead of course and the other long, skinny, fast-as-lightening tropical fish was laying in the bottom of the bucket, also dead. And the little goldfish were dying in droves.

So I raced to Meijer and bought two aerators and the necessary accessories to keep alive the goldfish that we were desperately trying to figure out how to get rid of. $20 to keep fish alive that we didn't want...... at all. Sometimes I defy all logic.

They're doing quite well now. They have plenty of air and I'm confident they'll be fine until morning. But what do we do with them then? Any ideas? If we put them in a pond somewhere, would they upset the ecological balance? I need some ideas.

Oh, and as for Big Daddy alias Fat Bastard, he was swimming around happily, came up to partake of dinner when we fed everybody, and generally seemed to adjust very well. That is until all the giant koi came down to that corner to clean up the dinner scraps that had drifted over there and had their usual feeding frenzy. After that, we didn't see him again. I guess he's either scared to death and hiding or eaten to death and dead.

So the day was successful. The small pond is clean and waiting for baby koi and I was so busy that I my mind was diverted from that uneasy feeling. I'm pretty sure it was your prayers that set me on the road to that project. Thank you all very much.