Plymouth at 14.c today off came the covers for the first time this year

[Dave 54]

Well today was a routine filter maintenance day draining the first vortex of fish waste and a 30% water change and what weather we had here in Plymouth with a temperature of 14.c.
I started off by sweeping away all the dead leaves on top of the filter housing and covers
Val and I decided that the covers should come off on such a warm day , we did however put them back in the evening as we are expecting an air temperature of between 3-5c .
Bexause the covers were off this gave us the chance to very carfully obseve our koi properly for the first time since the covers went on when they came up for their wheatgerm and garlic feed.
Each koi was given a once over looking for problems like bacterial infections and the ulcers caused by them, the water was in a crystal clear condition testing our water perameters we found that all where good and the koi who had spent most of this mild winter active and thus using up much of their winter reserves had been fed on a once a week basis.
We are very pleased to say that all our koi where in imaculate condition with not a thing wrong with them.
The covers will come off again on the next warm day until we can remove them mid April dependant on the weather.
It was really peaceful and stress free to be sat by the pond again watching the koi swim lazily by something we did not expect to be doing in March
One more thing both Val and I acctually got a bit of a suntan whilst the cats played in the garden chasing each other about much to our great amusment .
All in all a very nice day indeed



Dave

 

[Dave 54]

Since then temperature wise eve had mostly 10-11.c high winds, hail, heavy rain, flooding, trees down, Large sided vehicles blown over , bridge closed due to high winds [this the Tamar suspension bridge between Devon and Cornwall].
Incidentally this bridge was the worlds first to ever had two extra lanes added externally to the rest of the bridge which caused the supports to sink a further 6" into the bed of the river.
Sunshine then more high winds, hail, thunder, heavy rain etc etc , all this being caused by Storm Katie [the 5th or 6th named storm to hit the UK this winter].
The temperature of the pond water has been been around about a constant 11c give or take a few digits up or down with sun promised for today [hopefully]

Dave