It was so exciting seeing the 50 baby fish swimming around in their little bucket before we headed out. I couldn't wait to get home and get some pictures...they're just so cute!
After a 2+ hour drive from Boulder, at least half of which was spent in a pretty major rain storm (yay, rain! boo, low visibility), I ran in the house to grab my cameras. When I removed the lid, my heart sank....all but five or six of my new babies were lying at the bottom of the trash can, not moving. :-(
I started scooping them out so I could move them to the big tank to see if any could be revived. After several minutes, out of 50 fish, only ten survived. Worse than the dumped-out-in-the-bed-of-a-hot-truck-in-the-scorching-sun episode of last year! The only thing I can think of is that when I put the air tubes into the trash can for transportation, I didn't put the air rocks on them because they were kind of gummy and I was afraid they would get less air that way. Instead, the rocks weren't there to weigh them down, so I think the tubes popped up to the top of the water and blew out into the air instead of into the water. So sad seeing all those cute little rainbows dead. :-(
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| One of the babies - This is how big Fatty McFish was when I got her last year. |
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| Zipped up bag of fish failure - I read that if you fry them up crisp enough, it's easier to get the tiny bones out. Worth a shot. Or I guess I could boil them for fish stock - yum! :-{ |
Today, on the way home from work, I decided to cheer myself up, so I stopped at PetSmart and bought three small koi fish to put in the tank with the trout. Koi can survive cold (even freezing) water, so I figured why not add some color to my sad little tank of survivors.
As soon as I added them to the tank, the koi swam right over to the group of trout. The trout were like, "whuuuuttt???" and swam away. But within a few minutes, they were all hanging out together like a nice blended family. Don't ask me how I am going to "harvest" one set of fish and keep the others. Or how I will explain the sudden disappearance to my Koi babies. One day at a time...
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| Trout and Koi Buddies |
Hi! Katie in Moab here. I'm not sure how this came up (maybe because I smoked some trout a week ago), but your sister gave me a link to your 'blog. Now I'm interestedly reading through them all, and was wondering how your koi are doing with this freezy, icky weather?
ReplyDeleteThe tank is indoors, so it's not that cold (the water temp a couple of days ago was 48F). However, the koi haven't done too well in general. Two of them died within a few weeks, and the third one has looked like it's barely hanging on for the last several months. Not sure if it's due to tank conditions, or if it's just because they were already sickly when I got them. There are koi at an outdoor park down the street from us and they survive the winter under the frozen pond, so I guess if you get some hardy ones, they would do OK!
ReplyDeleteOkay, next weird question...the koi in the park pond. Does the pond freeze solid, or is there enough depth for a little unfrozen water under the ice (i.e. do the koi freeze solid)? I know where you are it gets VERY cold.
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