29 June 2008

Happy Fish

The fish are happy tonight, after suffering a glut of algae growth in their outdoor des res (aka the 'pond' which is actually a fibreglass planter) they were fished out today and all the algae scrubbed from the inside of the container, all the rocks scrubbed clean and then they were returned to a fresh clean environment - something they have never had.

To explain, I decided to have a water feature in the garden, and purchased a couple of irises; the planter was being thrown out at work so was free. I decided some oxygenating plants were the order of the day and asked a neighbour for some of theirs. These neighbours have a large pond full of koi carp and similar fish and this was early spring time when I got the weed.

About 2 months later on, I acquired some snails (from another neighbour) and had a few bits of wildlife (water beetles, water boatmen etc) who moved in to the free location. The irises bloomed and so did the fish eggs apparently as I noticed some movement in the water and stayed to watch carefully to see what else had moved in.

I hadn't actually intended on being a fish keeper, but todate out of the 20 fish that I acquired this way, I have 11 good sized fish in the pond and though I have lost a couple on the way by means of suicide (they jumped out of the water and onto the side), cats fishing at the side and the odd case of missing tail - nope I am still clueless on how that happened unless they chewed one unlucky fishes tail off.

So the 11 remaining fish are now swimming around in clear water, they have shelter in behind some pond grass and some pebbles (actually large rocks) and it is a pleasure to see them looking happy after a fairly stressful day.

1 comment:

Kathy G said...

I've always wanted to have a water feature in my yard, but haven't gotten around to doing the work that's required :-)