My Pond
It serves to say, I’ve
missed you since last year. I am waiting anxiously for spring
for one reason: spawn. I want to make sure I bought only female
koi last year to stock the pond. If there is one male, he’s
going to have a field day! Females can be bruised
significantly, even fatally, during a spawn. Internal injuries
may not even be noticed, until the fish dies. The process of
producing eggs and spawning is the most stressful a lady fish
ever has to face. I hope to prevent unwanted “extra” fish, and
maintain a steady predictable amount of fish in there, and
safety for my girls. Well, I had two choices: male or female.
Since I had a few fish I was already attached to, I chose the
sex that contained most of my favorite fish at the time, which
was female. Adding a few more fish is a crap shoot now. I hope
I was right…
I’ve learned a few new
tricks this year, in Southwest Florida. I am on well water.
With the drought, the levels of TDS (total dissolved solids) has
skyrocketed in my pond. At first I thought I needed
Praziquantel to treat for flukes. The fish were jumping. A
long time ago, I learned that fish do not jump because they are
happy. They jump to escape an undesirable situation. My TDS
were at 1600+ and they were miserable. I first tried water
changes, but that only made things worse (understandably, now).
Later, when we had pinpointed the problem, I added a bagful of
Microbe-Lift/Barley Straw Pellets. The pellets, or the peat,
not sure which, actually remove the TDS from the water,
rendering a much nicer environment for my koi. Lesson learned?
Sometimes it’s not what you can put into the pond but what you
can take out.
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