About That Time The Pond Fish Mocked Me
It's not entirely surprising that it looks like I drowned about 30 witches in our pond. There is green hair algae EVERYWHERE. I blame the weather man. The mild winter has jump started activity out there and created problems that we've never had before. The hair algae? Totally a new thing. I normally start battling floating algae in late May, but I guess the lack of winter is going to pose some new challenges. Early.
Hair algae is gross, by the way. It literally looks like green hair and it clings to EVERYTHING. It clogs the filters and generally sucks all of the joy out of standing around the pond and staring at the fish. As a result, I've been making it a habit to scoop out as much of the algae as I can the past few days.
When it was 60 and sunny yesterday, I made up my mind to get serious about cleaning out the pond. I grabbed our big net and scooped and scraped and scooped some more. Gunk was finding its way out of the pond at an amazing rate, right up until I tried to clean the corner where the fish have been hanging out lately. I accidentally caught one of them, set him (or her--it's not like I have ever inspected the fish for tiny little penises or anything) free, and then realized that another fish was floating on its side over by our really old pump.
Fish aren't supposed to float on their sides.
Sometimes dead fish sink to the bottom, so I figured I had just sent a recently deceased Koi floating over that way when I was scooping and scooping. I walked around to the other side of the pond and gave the maybe dead thing a nudge.
Nothing.
So I scooped it into the net.
I pulled the fish to the surface and inspected it. It kind of matters if there are any signs of disease on dead fish, so I checked for spots and such and noticed that the fish's eyes were all rolled up into the top of its head.
Definitely dead.
But then it twitched.
Was it still alive? Barely alive? About to die? Just screwing with me? I DIDN'T KNOW. As luck would have it, I married a guy with a Zoology degree. He is in charge of twitching animals. Just as I was about to yell at him to deal with the possibly dead thing, the damn fish started flailing and swam away.
Alrighty then. Not dead.
Fast forward to today. Today I decided to check on that Koi again because that whole playing dead thing is pretty much a sign of trouble.
The damn fish immediately started swimming as fast as it could straight at me. It turned at the very last second, but not until after it had launched itself out of the water and cannonball-splashed me on its way back in. It did the HEY I KNOW YOU AND HEY I'M NOT DEAD NEENER NEENER thing about a dozen times before I ran away from the pond because SERIOUSLY. I WAS BEING MOCKED BY A FISH.
I slowly crept back up on the pond a few minutes later and the mother trucking fish started screwing with me again.
So I left. The husband and I got in our truck and went to run errands.
When we returned, I decided to tempt fate again. I walked up to the pond and didn't see my little friend the white Koi. He (or she!) wasn't with the other fish. . . it wasn't near the pump . . . it wasn't anywhere.
I found it in the filter box. It looked dead again.
Since I had already played THAT game, I pulled the basket out of the filter box out and set the fish free in the water. It thanked me by splashing me a few dozen times.
At that point I had finally come to the conclusion that SOMETHING WAS WRONG. I'm a genius, I know. So I googled and googled and learned that white Koi are often the first to act out when there's trouble in paradise. A few more googles later and I had a possible answer--there wasn't enough oxygen in the pond.
That answer sort of didn't make sense given that the waterfall has been running for a while now. The waterfall is crazy over-sized for the pond, in no small part because I didn't want to have to deal with things like "not enough oxygen for the fishies." But, there were a dozen different fishy behaviors that matched the not-enough-oxygen-to-the-brain hypothesis, so I went with it. I nagged the husband to get the old pump running again.
(To explain: There are two pumps in our pond. One is SUPER BIG and runs the main waterfall. It lives inside a filter box on the outside of the pond. Its main claim to fame is that frogs often break through all of the traps and filters and baskets and get sucked to death on that pump. The other pump is an old one that runs a smaller waterfall. It's submerged in the pond itself. The old pump is so old that it only sometimes works. I hadn't bothered to try getting it to work yet this year.)
The husband grumbled and groaned, but set out to get the only-sometimes-working-pump working again. He reached into the pond to grab it and . . . ZZZZZZZZZZZAAAAAAAAAP!
He got electrocuted the second he put his hand in the water.
Not to point fingers or anything, but *I* am not the one who plugged in the only-sometimes-working-pump. I don't like trying to get it to work, so I'm not about to give it any power. That task belongs to the same guy who takes care of twitching animals.
Of course Twitchy Animal Man is fine. He has a history of getting shocked, so it was hardly more than an annoyance. But! But! But!
It was then that we realized that all of the fish in the pond have been getting a steady dose of electrocution ever since SOMEONE accidentally plugged in the old pump. The white Koi probably managed to get a SERIOUS zap when I accidentally chased it up against the pump yesterday, thus explaining the eye rolling and generally I'M DEAD behavior.
And the freak out today? Yeah, I'd freak out if the person who electrocuted me tried to get near me again. WHOOPS.
Pro Tip: Fish are a lot more active and happy when you aren't electrocuting them.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Reader Comments (6)
Glad to hear you figured out the problem. And grateful for the laughter it elicited. I am laughing so hard I'm in tears.
Hilarious. And that's a great picture!
Oh my goodness... well hopefully all is better now and you can view this simply as "the time we gave the fish electroshock therapy"... Poor little things!
Perfect picture for the end of that post. Love it!!
Jackie
giggling that you called him Twitchy Animal Man.
(so thankful we had nice weather so that you guys worked on the pond!)
a) that story is kinda awesome
b) I think it's super-cool that your hubs has a degree in zoology. Just sayin'