Today has been a big learning experience.
I’m posting this to my favourite 3 bulletin boards as some may learn by my error.
The weather has been dry and hot for a good while here in Somerset, England. Over a period of a few weeks, output from the large airstones I use in the mud ponds has been declining. They needed a clean, but I put the job back as I have been culling flat-out.
The forecast for days has been telling us that we were in for rain today Friday and it came this morning around 6.30am. I was at the koi farm by 7.00am and all the fry were looking for their early feed. I went round with the buckets of various size food and then finally (as usual) sat on a chair along side the pond of the oldest kohaku babies, bucket of pellets by my side. I sit back for 10 minutes have a smoke and throw pellets to the starving masses. From the total spawn I have kept 450, more will need to go at harvest.
The koi climbed on top of each other with the vigour of their feeding. I watched them eat all but the last few pellets, then set off for the food wholesalers, to pick up some more supplies at 9.30am.
I returned 2 hours later and walked down the line of ponds to see all was OK, to be confronted by 5 dead koi in the large kohaku pond. I rushed around the pond to see fish hanging, near life-less.
Straight away I pulled the airstones in, cut the pipes off with my penknife and use a cable tie/zip clip to attaché the open air pipe to the weighty airstone and dropped them back in.
With a huge volume of air going into the pond within 10 minutes koi could be seen swimming round. Slowly they have improved all day, but I think I have lost somewhere near a third of those babies. I’m gutted!
With rain comes a drop in the air pressure, less pressure pushing oxygen into the water, the food I had just given the koi dropped the oxygen levels even more.
My fault!
This ramble makes me feel better, thinking it my save some other koi somewhere, if it makes their owners more aware of how important oxygen levels are.
Below is one of the dead, a kohaku I had ear-marked at 2” for keeping back and growing on for my first kohaku parent koi.
Not 5 months old and 10”. Skin quality super. Maruzome kiwa. Super white ground for it’s age. Head pattern to far back to make the show grade.
Maurice.
Novice.