The aquarium looks like egg drop soup!!!

I'm back! Costa Rica was absolutely wonderful. 90 degrees, fun, and food. What can I say. I needed all weekend just to rest up. Zip lining, white water tubing, river boat touring, deep sea fishing...not much time to rest. I was glad to be home, however. February is a good time to be away from all the ponds and gardens, but still plenty to worry about. My son, Gabe, watches over things for me, but I still worry. Got home late Thursday. I have to tell you about something that did happen over the weekend though. Grand kids...you got to love them don't you? Mine are no exception. The youngest of 3 boys is 2. That should explain a lot. Well, they came over with their parents on Friday night for a fish fry of all things. Something we do quiet often though, because Harry and all the family are avid fishermen. So, we adults are in the kitchen just visiting and dinner is close to being on the table, when Ian (5) came running into the kitchen to say "Grandma! Grandma! Andy just fed the fish way too much food!!!" So, I walk into the living room to see the large aquarium is totally full of flake food!! I looks like egg drop soup!! He has dumped a complete quart container of flake food into the aquarium. I can't see the electric yellow cichlids from the yellow flakes churning everywhere in the tank!!! Yep...it's 8 o'clock at night and the whole thing has to be emptied and replaced. Ian is hiding behind the chair. My other son, Zach ask him what is wrong, he (Ian) didn't do anything wrong so he didn't have to hide. Ian replies that he just doesn't like it! It's just not right! We reassured him that it will be OK, we just have to clean it up. Andy sheepishly tells me "Sorry Grandma", which I accept without a second thought. The aquarium actually needed a good cleaning, I had just been putting it off since its a huge job by yourself. Now I had 2 sons helping me!! So the strategy is to get the wet vac and just suck it all out. Hopefully not sucking up any small fish. So out came the bad water. Zach would haul each tub out to the deck and dump it, then refill and repeat. We netted out the fish and held them in a bucket till we finished. Then we ran a hose up from the basement to rinse and re-vac again several times. Finally, we bucketed up water from the basement pond to actually refill the aquarium. The aquarium has not been this clean for a long time and I believe everyone even survived (the fish I mean, well us too). We may have sucked up a couple baby fish, but that is OK with me, as they multiply rapidly. Hopefully in a week or so they don't all get sick from the stress we put on them. We'll hide and hope for the best. Welcome home, uh?

Happy Valentines Day

Just wishing everyone a happy Valentines Day. Hate to brag, but I'm spending Valentines day and the whole week for that matter in sunny Costa Rica!!! Courtesy of my boss here at work. So will be back in a week all tired and tan, hopefully. I'll drink a fruity drink for you all.
The picture above is a shirt I made to wear to the AKCA Seminar last year in San Diego, which was over Valentines Day also.
Enjoy your snowy, sub-freezing week.

A koi named Herky

The above pictures are of an injured koi named Herky. Herky is a 4-5 inch koi that belongs to Michele Hurley. Last fall, she noticed Herky was swimming funny and to her dismay poor Herky was missing the whole lower half of his tail and appeared to even have some of his spine sticking out. Harry and I stopped in to take a look at poor Herky and after much discussion and a poor prognosis, I told Michele I'd take him home and do my best to see if I could get Herky to heal. I didn't feel like he would ever be able to grow his tail back. Michele is a real fish lover, and I think she just didn't want him dying under her watch. Husband, Harry, said on the way home, "you really aren't' going to try to nurse him back to health are you? He's already pineconeing which means he's half dead". (Pineconeing is not a good sign and usually indicates the kidneys are affected and the fish is unable to keep water and or bacteria from flooding into it's body.) Yep, I said, I'm certainly going to experiment with him and do everything I know how to do. I told Michele, I would, and I am! So home we went with Herky in a six-pack cooler to put him in the Allsup fishy hospital. Herky was small, so went in a 3 gallon clear plastic storage box with only an air stone. I set him on a table by the window and actually set a mirror up beside his tank so in seeing himself he wouldn't think he was by himself. With no filtration at all, I did daily water change outs. On the first morning, I sedated him and cleaned and dressed his wound. I slowly began raising the salt in his tank to a whopping .06%!!! This is high, but with his pineconing, he needed lots of help to keep the water from flooding into his body. Every morning, I did water changes and replaced the salts to maintain this level. I'd had good results on another fish using an antibiotic water treatment called Elbegin. It only takes a pinch for this small tank. Turns the water yellow. Then it was a waiting game. Every morning I got up expecting to find Herky dead. I feed him 3 pellets of medicated food a day, which I never seen him eat. At night I netted out any wasted in the bottom of the tub. The pellets were always gone, but I didn't know whether he ate them or they dissolved. Day after day, I changed water, added salt and Elbegin and everyday Herky still greeted me. And, to my amazement, he got slowly better. The redness disappeared and was replaced with white skin. (A sign of healing)His bloating came down, too. Michele assumed since I hadn't called her on his condition, that he had passed. After, a couple months, I figured I wasn't doing anything for him that Michele couldn't do. So, I took him back to his original home, where Michele has kept him all winter, now.

Winter water change

Temps got to a whole 30 yesterday. Don't know about you, but I'm really getting tired of winter. It warmed up just enough for Harry to go out and do a water change out. He cleared the pond of the last 2 inches of snow and dropped a sump pump down the hole created by the air stone. He pumped out 10 inches of water and then ran a hose from the outside faucet to the pond to refill with fresh water. We keep 2 long hoses in the basement just for this purpose. Takes a couple hours at least, but a good job done and you feel good about it after you've drained all the hoses and wrapped them back up to return to the basement. Hopefully the fish appreciate it too. A water change helps replace the KH which slowly deteriorates during the winter months. A high Kh is essential to Ph stability during the winter months. All looks good out there as of now. Fish seem to be doing ok, but it's early. It's usually March/April when all he** can break loose and fish deteriorate fast.
Fish in the basement still seem to be thriving ok. Had company over last weekend and actually took them to the basement to see the fish. The basement with the fish tank is small and chalk full of my seasonal house decorations, canned foods, and tons of misc. garbage to valuable to throw away, making it tight quarters and too embarrassing to take company to view. (of course, Harry thinks it all can be thrown away.)So these folks were some of the privileged few who get to see my basement pond set up. It isn't pretty, just functional. Keeps the fish safe and happy for the winter. I tell myself that's all that matters. Even then, as they usually do they all swam to hide in the back corner under the safety of the air stone that disturbs the surface of the water enough that they think they are hiding cause they can't see you standing there. Course you can't see them either. So I exposed my friends to my gross basement for nothing, cause they didn't get to see the fish much. Not sure why the basement fish are so skittish. I suppose I have one fish that sends out danger signals to all the fish and thus they are all that way. One fish can spoil it all you know. I've gotten rid of a fish before for being disruptive while they ate. She'd come up, grab a bite, and then flip her tail sending food and scared fish in every direction. Once I got rid of that fish, they all started eating quietly and gracefully and mealtime was a pleasure to watch and observe the fish. So if I can figure out which fish is the big scardy cat, it may be "outta here" too.