Fish Saga

New Fish Pond 

One rainy Saturday this Spring we noticed a frenzy of activity in the fish pond. Spawning had to be taking place and at least three female goldfish were involved. Soon the koi were surrounding the water hyacinths and having a caviar party. Quickly we grabbed water hyacinths and put them in our little aquarium hoping to save some of the little babies.

At the time we had 3 koi and 7 gold fish. In just a couple of days the little aquarium was full of tiny fish. Moved some of them to a five gallon bucket. Some to a glass jar on the kitchen cabinet just to watch their progress. Soon the aquarium began to fill up with something else - algae. So we hook up the filter, attach a knee-hi stocking over the intake and turn it on. It soon clogs, we run it some with and without the knee-hi. I notice that the population is getting smaller, so I move more to buckets. Soon there were no live fish in the aquarium.

We moved the water hyacinths back to the big pond. This seemed to trigger something in the koi, and they started spawning activity which seemed to give the goldfish ideas again. This time we drug out our old pre-formed pond and set it up. So all baby fish and egg loaded hyacinths were placed in there. Saved again from being eaten by the big fish.

In spite of our efforts, we did not get all of the babies out and away from the big fish. Today someone counted 11 babies now big enough to join in the eating frenzy with the grown koi and goldfish. The babies that we separated out are much smaller and too numerous to count. I can guess at maybe 25. We were so concerned about losing even one egg, and now we have no idea what we are going to do with all of these fish!

Old Pond