We took the day and kept at it, arranging rock, washing rock, scooping and pumping muck, and getting the pond about as clear as a 5000 gallon hole in the ground surrounded by trees, plants, and dirt can be.
I decided to revert to automation, in this instance, and connected the autotopoff, aka horse tank water level fixer, so by morning we should be on our way to having a full pond.
There is more to do: I have to wash out the filter boxes and the filters, add bacteria, add chlorine remover, add buffer, but our two pumps will be running to help those processes along.
When will there be fish, you ask. The temperature is running about 48 degrees, but the sun and the two pumps will add a bit to that. We’ll have to ask our koi place what temperature their fish are in, because we don’t want to stress them. We have to toss all our adult koi kibble (sob) and go over to baby koi food (the difference is size) aand then we can start thinking about baby fishes. I want one of Ari’s type, yamabuki ogon, and one of Maddy’s, which is a platinum butterfly fin; and we’ll want an orange one for Jane and a type which is rather hard to describe, but it has bluish sides and largish scales. Maybe a black one, and (for my vote) an orange-white spotted, because Renji was one of my favorites, the class clown. We’re not going to overload the pond. Give them room to grow fast so we can take the damn netting off sooner. It’s such a pain with the waterlilies and dragonflies.
What a lot of work! But, it looks like it will be more than worth i t.
Seems to me I remember at least one cat that got positively rotund sneaking koi food. Repurpose fish food as cat treats and you just may have conserved your resources.
Do you need a particular formula for younger koi, or could you get away with (gently) smashing the big pellets into smaller bite sized chunks?
At the library, when we had a big cichlid in a tank and a Library Cat, Junior, the cat, would hop up next to the tank when we were feeding Oscar the Grouch and demand one or two pieces of fish food as treats.
eta: D’oh! just noticed BCS comment; great minds, and all li’ dat!
Funny, our cat Mousie also loves our goldfish flakes and always comes running when I feed the fish. I hadn’t realized that might be a cat predilection because our other two — Whiskey and Tango, the Foxtrot brothers — aren’t particularly interested in the fish flakes.
Lol—he still would.
Considering the weather and climate, would another type of fish be better? Trout or some other native species?
Jonathan up in NH
Our native species is salmon, but we have no route for them to the sea. No, koi will do fine. It was just a combination of circumstances.
Since the koi dealt with Spokane winters for about 10 years, I would say that they were quite compatible with the climate. The only fish that would have prevailed in the perfect storm of bad luck that happened this year would have been made of plastic.
While the native species are generally attractively silver, I don’t think they would have the flamboyant variety (and personality) of the koi. But on the other hand if you thought they were too boring, they might be panfried and consumed with minimal guilt. I don’t know what would be native in Eastern Wash. but a lot of the lake fish in my neck of the woods can grow pretty damn big. (White sturgeon anyone?) You also might run into trouble for keeping native fish (game fish) in captivity.
By the way, salmon don’t need ocean access to spawn, see kokanee. But they DO grow too big for backyard ponds.
One species that might be able to deal with it (if they aren’t eaten by larger fish) is mosquitofish. They’re not native, but they gt planted in many ponds because they eat mosquito larvae and can tolerate a wide range of temperatures (and oxygen levels).
We had a school of them in a galvanized washtub with some plants – I’d recognize them, but I never had a name – and rocks and snails, and a mud and gravel bottom layer. They did very well, in an area where the temps could get close to 20F in winter and 115F in summer. We’d top off the water occasionally, between evaporation and the resident cat liking the flavor of the water (a sight to behold, perched on the rim of the tub with one paw in the water).
Back when you and Jane posted some pix of Ari and crew, I’d looked up the color patterns of koi, since I knew nothing about it. What really lovely patterns they can be. It sounds like you’ll have a beautiful variety for your pond.
If the only real difference in the fish food is the size of the kibble pellets, could you grind up the adult kibble you still have and mix it in with new baby fish food? Mortar and pestle? Or do you have something that would work as a grinder? Would a food processor do it without tearing it to pieces? Would adding small grains of something the fish could eat (flour or rice, say) improve that? It seems a shame to throw out perfectly good fish food, if the baby fish can eat it.
I may donate it to the koi store. The stuff is injected with air to make it float: grinding sort of messes that up.
What is the shelf life of the adult fish food? Could it be stored and used as the fish grow larger?
Well, it’s not at its best. And we’re talking a couple of years.
What about trading with another customer who’s buying food? “You buy this much baby food you can’t use, and I’ll give you this much adult food you can, and neither of us will be the worse off.”
I now have the hoses all connected and the filter running: pumps will help warm the water. It froze last night and will again Sunday, but days are in the 50’s and if this water had not come from buried pipes it would have met the cold night a little warmer.
I am soaking wet, have had to trim all my nails (cf A series of Unfortunate Events and the hair ribbon) and have been standing in cold water over the top of the garden clogs, not clean water either, but the filters are clean, the Matala filter is going, the topoff is topping off, the pond is filling, and we are going to see about pond netting and tent stakes. After lunch.
When we hit 50 degrees in the pond I will add some bacteria and Pond Balance. Not sure whether temperature affects the dechlorinator, but it’s chemistry and temperature affects chemistry, so probably I should wait. We do have bioactivity in there: you can see the bubbles from the lesser waterfall.
We won’t shop for koi, I am determined, until we are ready. The shop is lousy at ‘holding them’ for you.
Regarding the dechlorinator and temperature, it would depend on the specific chemistry involved, but the likely general result of using it at lower-than-optimal temperatures, would be slower reaction than expected. So if the timing is right to add it, but the temperature hasn’t gone up, I’d have thought you’d be okay to add it and see how it does.
Generally temperature is a kinetic effect. It affects the rate of reaction, i.e. how fast the “Brownian motion” brings the molecules into contact. Chlorine has a low vapor pressure and would “out-gas” more at higher temperatures, so it will stay at higher concentrations longer at lower temperatures.
But you’ve got pumps going, a kinetic effect all its own. Got “test papers”?
I went sniffing about for koi patterns, and I believe the kind with the bluish sides (scales outlined thinly in white) is called Asagi.
And a pox on iggles, raccoons, and other critters that find the Fancherry pond easy pickins!
“Iggles” gives me a little giggle. It sounds small and cute, so the first mental image I get from reading it is a youngish hedgehog (‘egel’ being Dutch for hedgehog) – then the double-take for needing to picture it as a large, fierce and majestic raptor always makes me laugh a little.
Feng Shui has a thing about having 8 gold goldfish and one black one, the black one being there to take the hit of any shar chi (bad vibes) that might get loose in the home. I’ve been imaging in my mind a needlepoint of a pond with 8 gold goldfish and a black one for the longest time. Wonder if it will ever happen. . .
Aquariums are supposed to be excellent feng shui if placed carefully in the home, but placement depends on the kua numbers of the homes inhabitants and where their good sectors fall. That is, of course, if you believe in feng shui . . .
Hopefully, you will get things up and running, and get the pond all nice and ready for its new fishy denizens soon, and be able to keep the fishy denizens out of the clutches (and gullets) of the other local denizens.
We have two tanks in the living room at the front, one marine, one fresh, and a 5000 koi pond in the back, plus a 300 gallon lotus pond. I think we have a lot of fluidity in our feng shui—and that kind of describes the way things go around here. 😉
And the motorized clam!
We traditionally have one black goldfish amidst our other goldfish in our tank. That goldfish is always named “Cannibal Jones” (name courtesy of my spouse). I say “traditionally” because we have found that Goldfish Flakes contains a a component that promotes golden skin color in the feed (carotene?) so that formerly black, small goldfish slowly transition to gold. Our current batch of four fishes, however, does indeed have a visibly black Cannibal Jones. I’m hoping this one stays that way.
The pond is now full except the last 6 inches, at which point the big waterfall pump comes into play. Yesterday I pulled the 8 filters of the Matala box and washed them, and we found the netting and have a scheme of using really heavy rocks as anchors for it so we can easily adjust tension. Today it’s raining. But if we can get a clear moment, we’re going to use a hose to fill the waterfall body (about 40 gallons) and with the gate valve shut; then open the gate valve periodically to flush the old gunk away into the garden.
Cat Protest — I was remiss in not packing cat toys in with the must-have basic supplies! So one of the cats last night stole a kitchen scrubber (round) and left it under my newly moved in office chair. You can’t get much clearer than that for communication, short of saying, “Hey buddy, where’s our toys? You’re s’posed to play with us!” There will be a resupply asap, and meanwhile, the makeshift cat toys will do.
Goober likes to play catch with a rainbow fabric colored ball that’s almost a ping pong ball, or a thick foam bar, either of which are at Petco or Amazon. They both like the “OurPets” brand catnip cloth “veggies” and the larger catnip mice / squirrels, etc. (I forget the brand.)
Goober has found a particularly favored hidey-hole in the top corner of either bedroom closet where it is dark, quiet, and undisturbed. So for now, at least one closet stays open. (You can guess how I discovered he was in there.)
Tue. or Wed., I’ll have another foray to the storage space, and after this month, it should be down to a smaller size. I’m currently awaiting the mail for vacuum cleaner bags, a chair cushion, and other odds and ends, either necessary or very comforting. — My camera, my jeans, and the BJD crew, among more important things, such as my pantry, are still (somewhere) in storage in/under lots of boxes. But a grocery trip Thursday helped a lot.
My kitties liked small light toys they could play cat hockey with. (bottle caps, for instance) A favorite one was a ball of aluminum foil tamped down very, very firmly, and rolled over a hard surface to make it as compact and smooth as possible — and most importantly, too large to get inside a cat’s mouth. Even that size — a bit larger than a ping pong ball — is light enough that a really rousing game of cat hockey can ensue, even on carpet. The aluminum waddie, as it was known, was popular in the bathtub. It makes an indescribable noise being batted up against the back end of the tub to make it zoom around in a curve and come back toward the batter.
I have a tendency to wear the heels out of my socks, and about an inch and a half’s worth of sock toe firmly stuffed with cotton and sewn shut was another favorite “mouse” toy. Again, one small enough to bat about, but this one could be carried about in the mouth and “paraded” while singing the mighty hunter song.
We have all the filters washed, and are filling up the final half-foot to bring the second pump and big waterfall into action, which also will help to warm the pond.
I want to get you some photos, but it’s raining cats and small poodles out there and the camera’s not waterproof.
Just say, it’s looking good.
We’ve got a lot of pickup to do—seems as if we hauled every pump and resource we had into action. And we’re expecting animals two by two any day now. It’s stopped snowing daily and is just raining daily, as the snow melts and the Spokane River rises. We’re on a bluff that withstood the Missoula Floods of 11000 BC, so we’re good, but people on the river may have some problems.
Jane did get some photos of the waterlily roots, which are epic. They’ve gotten extensive enough we were getting 5-6 lilies open at a time last year. We encourage them to keep growing and did not disturb them during the drain-down.
The water-striders are about their business already (bugs the koi will not eat, so I can only imagine they must be unpleasant) and the quince is showing the first hint of green leaves unfolding.
We’re already over 110% of an average year’s rainfall. Normally, we wouldn’t expect the rainfall to stop until July 5th, almost another quarter year. Landslides all over town. All it’d take now is a magnitude 4-5 earthquake to get things jiggling…
Oh, and that’s not to mention that reservoirs throughout the PNW are full, and the dams will be releasing water for self preservation.
You and Jane must be fish experts by now, between the outdoor pond and the indoor salt water tanks. How do you do it? I have trouble running my 45 and 10 gallon fresh water tanks.
Sorry to hear about the Koi. My mother has a pond, and it gets attacked by a heron every so often and she loses everything, How do you avoid that, or is it that the Koi get large enough they are protected from predators?
New to the site. Is there a section on the site where people introduce themselves ?
Paul
Netting. Fine mesh stretched over the pond until the fish get inconveniently large, a virtue koi have. We use what’s called ‘wildlife netting’ from Lowe’s.
And welcome in, Pin!
Very, very sorry to hear about the fish. (My computer needed reïnstallation, so I’ve been incommunicado.) I like two heaters as the most redundant solution. Thermal inertia, the water has.
I like the site redesign, though I’d like to see gray on brilliant white replaced with something easier on my circadian rhythms; black on something with no blue would be nice: red, peach, yellow, chartreuse, green.
Would it make sense to drop some Gambusia in now? (AKA mosquitofish, topminnows.) They are cheap, would eat any bug larvae, and would either co-exist or feed the Koi. They’d condition the water, and act as canaries, except for being very hardy. They don’t get much more than in inch long, and breed like rabbits. Gender is easy: big females, small males.
I’ve had a tiny bit of Latin, a friend more. We were both stumped by this: it’s well known that Latin sentences can be rearranged (almost?) without limit because each word’s function is in its suffix. My friend thought that would even account for, “I went to the forum then to my insula.” What puzzled us was if the case was, “I went to the forum, then to the bath, and then to my insula.” My friend recalled Latin has something of a successor tense (my wording), but I presume a limit. Anyone?
Latin sentences can be rearranged considerably, but not to an unlimited extent. In this case you couldn’t rearrange the words without changing the meaning.
It’s often (but not always) possible to change the order of words within a clause, but you can’t mix words belonging to different clauses. It may be possible to rearrange the words of a main clause around an internal subordinate clause.
There is a standard word order, however, and changing the word order changes the emphasis, even if it doesn’t change the meaning.
Clauses! Thank you!
“Went to” in the sense of ‘visited’ or ‘went for a purpose’ doesn’t really exist conveniently in Latin: it’s very English. You’re more likely to say ‘I was present at’ (adsum) or ‘I enjoyed’ (fruebam) the baths, then was present at the forum before I went back home (redii domum). (‘home’ as in English lacks the ‘to’ necessary for other words.)
Yes, I’ve encountered “common verb plus random preposition” has random meaning in English before. If I’d been more awake, I would have written a more sensible verb. Still, it’s a hard habit to break.
Interesting about Greek, below. Learning Latin and Greek was often held to impart mental flexibility. I think I will hope linguistics is an adequate substitute.
And if you want a real jigsaw of a language, Greek: The home from the war returning general house mine by-passed. Modern German does that sort of thing. In Greek the whole ‘the—general’ package is clear by word endings and the from the war bit is ‘packaged’ between the article the (ho) and the word it describes, general (strategos). You hammer your mind at that for several weeks until one night after midnight it begins to sound natural and you know you’ve passed the linguistic sound barrier.
ah, one of those languages.
I did the equivalent of five quarters of college German, and that’s not so hard for me to deal with. Still a pain – you have to learn to hold the whole rest of the sentence in your mind until you get to the verb at the end. Or the structure of that compound noun.
My spouse, several friends and I self-taught ourselves Ancient Greek. My spouse is brilliant at it (then went directly into Advanced Greek at Harvard Extension School); I stink. I far prefer Latin. The Greek verb system is a bear.
Ancient Greek particularly is a sort of assembled vocabulary –you know, the box you’re given that has nuts, bolts, and a lot of girders that can fit together multiple ways. You don’t so much memorize words as you memorize pieces, like tele-, xeno-, amphi-, kata-; (far, foreign, both or all around, down from or down) and then a bunch of things to attach them to—like baino, go; lavino, take; phono, sound, and mix and match on a grand scale. I treasured a wonderful Greek lexicon I came by, which gives the parts, just the parts, ma’am…
So would katalavino be import? I expect it’s not that easy.
It’s actually to take down or understand… Biblical Greek has it as katalambano, but Classical pronounces it as katalavino. Over a whole range of centuries it mutates a lot. Modern Greek is vaguely understandable if you speak Classical, but there are changes, sheep that used to go Baa now going Vee Vee, etc. And there are regional variants. I found it ironic that in the ancient world, a Persian spy posed as a Euboean (long island off Boeotia/Theban area) for some time before being exposed as having pierced ears [slave or foreigner]…nobody could understand him, but then Athenian (Attic) Greeks had trouble understanding the Euboeans. I could limp along on Classical Greek in modern Athens, and in Sparta, but when we stayed in Thebes, in the central region—it was a whole different language…using the same letters, but a different pronunciation: the midlands upholds its reputation for accent to this day.
Is modern Greek still so…modular?
I was Googling looking for a more detailed explanation of Atevi numerical felicity. I got a quote roughly, “They hate 2 and like 3, but any odd number? Primes especially?” The link into your site didn’t work, I presume because of recent revisions? Probably that will repair itself next time Google crawls your site.
I also noticed that the Foreigner Guide page is in the right column twice, and that the page needs updating, listing Intruder as in progress. Wikipedia seems to have a tidy, up-to-date list.
Pretty well.
RE atevi numerology: 3 is a number they like. Nine is particularly felicitous. 2 and 4 are the worst. Five is not as bad. And on it goes. It’s the divisibility in which you can end up with two equals that they particularly avoid.
Thank you!
I was going to drop the Atevi numerology–I presume it might get a little annoying answering detailed questions about a fictional numerology. But I noted this pattern, which I thought you might like. The basis is somewhat salacious and I expect you’ll recognize the pattern without further hints, but the it does seem felicitous, perhaps for introducing Atevi to the game go or some form of chess or shōgi? (Wa shogi is played on an 11×11 board; see Wikipedia.)
1+3+9+27+81 = 121 = 11×11
Or maybe you’ve been here already and I’ve forgotten.