It’s been bitter chill and windy ever since we took the lawn up…so cold I haven’t been able to wash out the filters for the pond (two of them are lying on the patio drying out, but not washed, because the water is like ice) and am down to my last useable filter: if the weather doesn’t warm I’ll have to put on the rainsuit (which can make you pretty warm) and get out there and hose down the filter inserts.
The koi are still sheltering under the winter-shelter and huddling near the bottom heater at night, but by day they’ve come up to lie in the sun and nibble a little of the algae that’s starting to grow. An exotherm like a fish or lizard is different: they use food for growth and insulating fat, but whereas with a warmblood (endotherm) you’d naturally think, gee, I should feed them so they can keep going and stay warm, with an exotherm you just hope the weather warms before they get too thin: they use up their fat quite slowly, being torporous (halfway sleeping, one step short of hibernation: they can think, at a lower level than normal, evade danger, respond to stimuli)—and you daren’t feed them, because that food, in cold, won’t go to warm them: it will lie in their bellies without sufficient warmth to enable their gut bacteria to get into action and digest the stuff. So you have to be very careful not to feed them near dark; not to feed them protein; not to feed them much at all.
The food of choice is, I’m told, Cheerios. So I got some Cheerios. They didn’t want any two days ago. Yesterday was raining and they didn’t come out until late. This morning we have intermittent bright sun, and they’re basking. I tossed out about one Cheerio apiece, and they bestirred themselves and ate. The weather will hold this way today, and they will heat up from the sun and hopefully be able to digest it.
We’d hoped the pond store would be open Friday so we could get some direct advice (I don’t trust the internet for everything) but it being Easter weekend, they probably won’t open until next Friday. When we get some plants we can remove the winter cover and let a floating ring full of water hyacinth do that job.
Anyway, they’re looking pretty good—a little thinner, but not drastically so, and quite happily, not infested with anything or breaking out in sores, as can happen in unhealthy ponds. I guess we’ve been doing pretty well.
Looking forward to pictures of the pond in springtime.
Oooooh—I just wrote a post about the situation in the publishing industry. I am now taking a deep breath and contemplating the breaking buds on the weeping cherry tree that stands by the garden gate. The heather is blooming. Tulips are coming up. I wish I could clone myself and get my work done AND have a few days to rent a rototiller and lay weedcloth. The same spring rain that has brought those blooms is bringing up grass from the stripped areas of the front and sides. Gotta get after that.
I was cleaning the dead leaves out of my wee water garden today in our 80 degree Easter weekend here in Boston. I’ll drain it of its stinky, rotten water in a few weeks and try to get a good biotic system going in it. Come June or so, I’ll put the goldfish back out but they are certainly a pleasure to watch while sitting on the living room couch inside. I miss them when they go out to the bigger (and racoon-filled) world.