amanda_lodden

The recent 3-weeks-worth-of-rain-in-a-single-night storms had filled the pond to a point that even the leak couldn't keep up and the stream held water for a while. A few nights ago, I glanced out the window nearest the starting point of the stream and noticed movement. Further investigation revealed that the movement was a small koi who was checking out this new territory. Also, the koi, while still small by koi standards, are about twice as long as they were when I put them in the pond last year. (They're not big fans of the surface, especially when there's movement near it, so I rarely get to seem them up close.)

This led me to watch the pond for a while, fascinated with the fish. Some of the fish are nowhere near as big as the larger fish, and at first I wondered what was wrong with them that they hadn't grown. Then I started counting, and realized that I have the nine larger fish that I put in (ten, minus one that became a turtle snack early on), plus at least two smaller fish. Babies, in other words.

I have yet to determine whether they're baby koi, baby goldfish, or one (plus?) of each.

[Update: There are definitely baby koi, and I'm 99% certain that it's a mix of both. Also, there are at least four babies, maybe more.]

The pond, while still leaking and in need of work, has started to attract visitors.

Though there are still leaks in the pond (or, more precisely, in the stream, so that they only show up once you start the whole thing running), I bought four little goldfish as a cheap (total cost: $0.76) method of testing the water quality. The idea was to toss them in and then observe their behavior-- if they stayed within a few inches of the surface, that's an indication that I need a bubbler or something to put more oxygen in the water. If they die immediately, there's toxins that need to be dealt with. If the birds eat them, there's not enough hiding places. And so on.

As soon as I let them out of their little baggie into the water, they made a beeline for the bottom of the pond and stayed there. The good news is that the water has plenty of oxygen, but I was hoping for a little bit more surface activity now and then. For a week, we only saw one fish, and I was sure that he was the lone survivor of the hostile landscape. Then, earlier this week, we started seeing three of the fish darting around... and by then, we were certain that three had survived, and the fourth had either gotten scooped up in a bottom-cleaning accident or had died and was floating at the top of one of the hiding places.

This morning, I went out to fuss with water levels, and saw all four fish at once. I am not a murderer! Also, my water quality is really good.