following along with taking the netting off the pond and the fish being happier, I’ve been working on their winter condo…
rarely do I clean the tanks when they head out to the pond, lol…
so, I’ve been working on emptying tanks, cleaning them and getting them set up for the big move…
this year I decided to move the small tank from the living room to the dining room credenza with the other two tanks…
the plan is to have plants on the ledge where the tank was…
to do that I had to empty the two big tanks so that I could move them along so there would be room to fit the third one in… they also were scrubbed to get most of the algae off them…
and of course the one is the same depth, but about an inch and a half shorter than the others… we found some wood in the garage that brought it up to the perfect height…
we ordered a pump to use to empty them and after waiting for it to arrive, when I used it on Saturday, it worked for about five minutes and then quit, sigh… so I filled a jug and dumped it into the toilet over and over as well as watering some of the planters outside…
I quite like how they look all together…
after nearly completely emptying them and moving them, I filled them with the outside hose… I am so happy that it extends to a hundred feet so it can do things like this…
two of the three pumps started with no problem… unfortunately, the biggest one did not… it had been giving me a bit of trouble last year so I will be heading to Nestor’s to either replace the pump or the whole system… we have had that one for many years…
once it is running, it will likely be three or four weeks to be sure the water is clean and ready, before the fish come in…
on Friday I rearranged the lawn furniture so there was a bit more space on the back deck…
on Saturday, I took the netting off the pond… it was doing a good job of collecting the leaves although the weight of them had it sinking into the water…
the fish weren’t moving around as much as usual, the birds weren’t drinking or bathing and I didn’t like the look of it…
next year when it goes down, I will put some thin boards over the top so that it doesn’t slip into the fishes’ domain…
now, the fish, the birds, and I are much happier, lol…
a few weeks ago a friend brought me some koi that a neighbour had given her for me… they are a fair bit smaller than the goldfish, but I anticipate they will grow quickly…
I’ve never had (or wanted) koi, so it will be interesting to see how it goes… this photo shows one of them (mainly black and white) amongst the much larger goldfish…
my fish are fairly tough… they don’t get any special treatment so we will see how the koi manage in that environment;-)…
spent more time at The Leaf on Tuesday morning before my daughter headed home… it is such a wonderful point of happiness for me, and my daughter…
we discovered, after chatting with Linda, one of the gardeners, that the second cacao tree has now got two cacao pods on it… this is very exciting as only the first tree had been producing pods…
we spotted a little lizard on the third tree… apparently it arrived with one of plants, lol…
Linda was very excited to show us the mango tree that had just been planted…
we also learned there are fifty fish in the pond, and all the smaller ones were babies from the largest ones… the excess fish have been moved to another location to keep the population stable…
for whatever reason (that I can’t figure out) the pump at the end seems to keep tipping up… I decided to put a fair-sized rock in to hold the edge of the pump down and give the fish somewhere to hide under, other than the bridge, lol…
and I removed the two dead water lilies which were clearly not coming back…
we will see if it works… well, look…
it seems as though the fish have finally decided that they can swim around the entire pond…