introduction

[j.w]

Yep and she has compartments for all her veggie snacks and a holder for her wine bottle on the side :moped: :beer:

 

[callingcolleen1]

Hey If I have to crawl out of the wheelchair and drag myself on my hands and knees around the pond to keep it nice when I am old and grey then I will!! Ha ha ha..... and thats why I need the wine to help me along too! They will have to drag me to the old folks home "kicking and screaming" before I leave my ponds! He he he. When the men in the funny white jackets come for me I will say PLEasE let me stay Just one more summer by the pond......

 

[addy1]

My dad's one huge request, was no nursing home! We made it........

My only old age desire is to follow his request, no nursing home, unless my brain is so gone I have no clue I am there.
We just set up 24 hour care for his parents now to keep them together and in their own home. It was the goal of our last trip down to florida to set that up. Cheap to do in Florida. The aide is getting a place to live, free food, tv, etc and paid. So far working out. She has worked for us for a few years now so we know she is trustworthy to be living with the parents. Our main nurse keeps an eye on her and the parents.

I handle all the financial, keeps the temptation of "borrowing" money way down. They have none to borrow lol Love internet banking!

 

[milocat2012]

Hello everybody. I'm happy to be new member. A little about my pond I had ponds for over 10 years, and this one we build about 2 years ago when we moved. We expended it 5 times since first build it expended it twice only over last summer. Now it's around 2800 gallons and a little over 3 feet in deepest part. Has 4 waterfalls. I included the pictures of my pond from past summer. first one after expansion last spring and the second after last expansion in August.
And i'm also curious maybe someone actually knows why this is happening this winter. I had ponds for over 10 years but never had any problem in the winter and we had some harsh winters before. Just a little details about what happened: in the beginning of January it got colder here (i live in New Jersey) i noticed that one of my fish started swimming in the pond, as the others were just sitting on the bottom of the pond as they normally do in the winter. I though it was weird as i've never seen fish swimming laps in the winter. So i didn't actually know what to do, but just watch that fish for the whole day. unfortunately next morning i found this fish on the bottom of my pond lying on its side. it looked dead, but when i took it out thru the hole in the ice it actually still was barely alive, so i set up the quarantine tank in the garage, filled it up with cold water from the pond and put that fish in it, hoping that if the water slowly warms up and it will help. i also gave it 1 injection of Baytril. luckily injecting was easy to do as fish didn't give me any resistance from it's almost dead stage. fish was just floating belly up in the tank but after about an hour from the injection the fish was already keeping itself upright and started to swim. I also put some Nitrofuracin Green in the water. i kept this fish in the garage for 10 days till weather warmed up and i slowly brought the water temperature in the tank (it was in the upper 40s F) to the pond temp. that was around 40 F then. and i released it back to the pond, and so far it's doing well in there. Now the weather got freezing again about 3 days ago, pond froze up again, and my 3 air stones and 1 deicer are only keeping 4 small holes in the ice, and 3 days ago i noticed that the other fish started to swim laps in icy cold water, so i already knew that it's definitely a bad sign, but still just watched it, but of course the story repeated itself and i found it belly up on the bottom of the pond yesterday morning: so back to the same steps again. This fish was even in the worse condition than the first one: it didn't have any movement exept i saw it's gills was very slowly opening. the injection also was very easy with it. but the result is promising now: it took much longer time to recover for this fish, it was floating belly up for half a day, but by the middle of the day the water temp warmed up from low 30 F to upper 30s F, and it's started to keep itself upright. Today it's swimming in the tank and looking fine for now. i will probably have to keep it in the garage till weather warms up. Is anybody knows why this is happening this winter? Both of this fish was purchased and shipped from Hawaii back in the summer and were fine till it got real cold. not sure if it has something to do that they're in the warm climate before they got here: the first one that collapsed is 3 years old and the second is 2 y.o.
So i hope this info helps someone with similar problem. the attached are the pictures of the sick fish: the first is the is 3 y.o. before i released it back to the pond 2 weeks ago, and the second is the sick fish that swimming in my garage now.

 

[callingcolleen1]

I have had a goldfish lay on it's side when sudden big drop in temperture in the late fall or early winter. They odd goldfish does this every year, and I do nothing and they all correct themselves within a couple weeks. They do not however swim around when the other fish at bottom, and it has never happened to my koi.

Question; does this happen to the biggest fish only, or fish of all sizes?

 

[milocat2012]

Hi, Thanks for your respond. No the 2 koi that collapsed are not the biggest ones: first one is about 16-17'' and the one that collapsed second is around 13-14''. they both are my new addition i bough them at the end of this summer after expanding my pond. I do have another weird koi that lays on it's side sometimes: he's also new one, but he then corrects himself and act normal. It's a puzzle to me as i never had this before. I have around 17 koi from 9'' to about 25'' long then also 6 baby koi that was born from my big ones this summer, 2 shubunkins, 1 big oranda and one baby oranda. they all doing fine so far. And after it happened to the first it was strange, but i was happy that i was able to save him, but when the same thing happened to the other one 3 weeks later right when second even colder then first outbreak hit us, i'm now puzzled even more, just thunking that maybe i had to have quarantine tank all winter in my garage to get ready if it happened again. And like i said it's not the first cold winter we have since i had ponds.

 

[callingcolleen1]

Well the new fish you got last fall were most likely not winter ready, and weak from the stress of moving, and may have brought a parasite to the pond. If only the largest fish were affected, it would most likely be poor water quality as the largest are affected most by poor water as they breath in more ammonia and gases first. It could also be a combination of both as well.

I keep good filtration going in my ponds all winter, and when one of my pumps was shut down, I noticed the water looked not so fresh. Got that pump going again and fish are now moving around much more and water looks much better. It is a warmer day today here in Canada, so I got some work done around the ponds. My main pumps do not shut down ever, and my filter system is different then most around here. I have big filters before the pump that are below the water, under the pond heater, where I can access easy.

 

[milocat2012]

Hi, thanks for the feed back. Most of the info you understand wrong: as i mentioned before it's not the biggest fish that got affecter but the medium ones. in fact all the big ones are fine. As for water quality: this the first thing i checked after first fish got sick, and it wash't the issue at all, all parameters are fine. And i didn't get those fish in the fall but in the end of august and it stayed warm for about 2.5-3 months after they're in the pond, and they're fine all that time and even when it started to get colder as well. only problem started in really cold weather. Beginning of January the first incident: the outside temp. then was around 20 F high, and the water temp around 30 F on the top of the pond. and it's even colder now. as you probably know that no parasites can't live in that icy cold water anyway And of course i didn't bring any parasites before as I NEVER put any new fish in the pond without proper quarantine procedure for 2-3 weeks first. Also i got 5 more fish from the same dealer and the rest of them are fine so far. So the only thing i think that it's something to do with really cold weather. not sure why it's happened but it luckily i got them out injected and warm them up still in time before they were completely dead, so that a little bit of life left in them was enough to save them. now i just hope that it doesn't happen to any other fish. Maybe Japanese koi are more sensitive to cold weather. But what i've learned over years of pond keeping that Baytril is a miracle med. that every koi owner should have on hand at all times. It did saved my fish on several occasions.
as to the fact that you're saying that you have filtration going all winter, that's something i don't do, and from previous experience is useless and even dangerous thing to do unless you have pond water heater, which as i understood you have. i've read about house heaters as well and chose that it's not for me as well, as besides the fact that they suck so much electricity to operate them 24/7, that it could be dangerous as well, because if for any reason the heater ever fail to operate in the winter, that under very cold conditions water in the pond will cool off so rapidly and it will kill all your koi for sure.

 

[mtpond]

Welcome to the group milocat2012.