Live and learn!
We now have very little green algae: we have a barley-based clarifier and a type of bacteria-based cleanup stuff normally sold for small lakes: I use it by the half-ounce weekly, and another dose of a different bacterial cocktail once monthly, and it’s doing wonders. Finally! When in doubt, ask a pond keeper from your own area, who’s got theirs under control. It’s looking good out there. The fishes are all growing, even Denys, who almost didn’t survive his first hibernation: he came out coated in nasty bacterial infection and even green algae was growing on him: he wouldn’t eat, he hung back afraid of everybody, and the infection ate away his dorsal fin and affected his gills…I wouldn’t have given you two cents for his chances of surviving a week when he got down to resting on the bottom in the shallows and refusing to move. I couldn’t catch him to treat it: he’d put on a burst of speed and run if I tried to catch him, and chasing him down might kill him outright, in that condition.
But…come warmer weather, the infection began to go away, the fin regrew totally, the last patch of algae left his skin, and he began to eat if we were careful and made sure he got some.
Well, here’s hot weather, and this morning we saw a gratifying sight: little Denys, that we’ve been feeding separately, charged one of our larger food-hounds, Renji, and got the pellet Renji was after, just snatched it and ran. Denys is putting on weight lately, and all of a sudden he’s scrimmaging for food—this is good. I’m hoping now we’ve turned the corner with him and he’ll go into this year’s hibernation able to handle it.
I know that there are people reading the post and saying,”No fish has a personality” but they clearly haven’t kept koi. Thry’re bursting with it.
BTW, Heuell Howser has a great show visiting a koi farm outside Barstow, Calif. Really interesting.
Phil Brown
Our fellows even come when called. They know we’re up there, but they’re not sure, in a 20′ long pond, where we are. We call fishy-fishy-fishy, and here they come. They hear. They run from spooky noises. They don’t like strange shadows—I wore a hat to pond-edge and they freaked. And Ari has gotten to where she’ll bliss out when eating from your hand and seems to rather enjoy being petted for a moment. Ikkaku is a reclusive fellow who gets reckless enough to come in and fight the mob when there’s a special treat he likes….they’re all different: they approach feeding differently. Some swim like fighter pilots after pellets, some are relatively clumsy trying to get a good angle on them… each different.
And counting they live for over two centuries, you can figure they develop quite a lot of personality over time.
hooray for Denys! what a survivor. my swimming pond has begun to get a bit more under control now – we are feeding the plants that hold down the algae, and the leak was found and stopped so I am not having to top up with the wrong water. the system keeps it pretty clear! these systems settle down in the end once you have the balance right … I guess your problem this year was partly the water hyacinth not making it …
to whom are you leaving your fish? they are worse than parrots …
Regarding life spans, there’s some evidence that carp don’t die from old age but from disease or injury.
Phil Brown
Interesting. They did some scale tests on fish in a village pond in Japan, a pond the integrity of which goes back further than living memory or story, and the oldest fish they tested came in at 225 years. This is one pond, that may not have the absolute oldest fish. Ponds associated with some of the temples, who knows? But this fellow, hatched in 1785, would have just missed the American Revolution in 1776, and was pushing his first century at the opening of Japan to the outside world (1854.) He or she would have been swimming amongst his lily pads during the American Civil War, and the first electric lights would have shone on his pond considerably after 1879…before that it was only the moon and rice-paper lanterns.
Koi, like redwoods and Galapagos tortoises, give us a certain sense of perspective.
It’s a serious responsibility: fortunately in an area with strong pond hobbydom, there are places. Right now there is a retirement home with a koi pond that will take in fish, and our pond dealer will also take in koi that need a home, whose owners have moved or whatever, and resell them to a larger pond that can accommodate them. There are places for big koi, but they pretty well have to be local, because transporting them is not easy—sort of like moving a whale that doesn’t breathe air…and when they get 2 feet in length, they are heavy! not to mention slippery… Max growth for these guys is close on 3 feet, and quite a lot of girth. I have a guess, however, that it is females that get this big (among fish species, females are usually the largest), and that only the dominant one every so many thousand gallons of pond will do it.
If you want an experience, and you’re in Oklahoma City, visit the Crystal Bridge, which is a cylindrical arboretum spanning a koi pond: and go down to the pond, which is huge. So are the koi. I believe they may still sell packets of koi food in the gift shop…and you will see such a feeding frenzy among really big fishes…
Don’t feel too sorry for them: koi eat just about anything that Mother Nature drops into the pond or grows there: algae, bugs, worms, you name it. They have those little barbels so they can probe the pebbles, mud and lily roots for tidbits.
Yep, our water hyacinth got algae-fied roots and just couldn’t grow until we got the algae tamed—ironically.
We will have many varieties of life once the pond is fully functioning. We stopped filling to work on the water fall. Proge’s father has to use the front loader to lift the BIG ROCK so we can get the liner properly situated. That said, right now we have robot wind up fish plus a few clay whistle fish and frogs among pots of blue and yellow flags, canna and papyrus. Maybe it’s a good thing that we live back in the woods where no one can see us! 😉
PS-Great news that the pond is back and that the fishies are doing well. 😀