We bought our house a little over a year ago. When we bought the house, it was the tail-end of winter and the backyard was pretty much frozen over. We didn’t notice the small pond in the backyard because the dead winter vines had pretty much grown over it. Nor was this disclosed to us in any of the house paperwork.
So, imagine our surprise when we moved in and found fish food and chemicals in one of the cabinets in the mud room. Turns out, we were now the proud owners of 8 large goldfish, who had been hibernating in this small pond. Granted, it was very nice of the previous owners to leave us the fish food and chemicals, but it would have been even nicer to KNOW about the fish before we bought the house.
We have no experience with fish ponds. My experience with fish had been limited to two goldfish that I kept during my sophomore year of college in my small tank in my dorm room. So, we did some reading and learned what we needed to do to keep the fish healthy. We jokingly named them after characters on Arrested Development and The Office (Come on, Lucille II, come on, Dwight Shrute, come on, GOB, come get your food!).
Of course, then the pump broke right after we moved in :rolleyes: . It had worked perfectly for about three weeks, and then broke. So we shelled out the cash to attempt to fix it, but it’s never quite worked right since. ElzaHub cleans it religiously, and does everything that they tell us at the fish store, but it still doesn’t quite work the way it did before it broke. We can’t afford to replace it outright right now, so we continue to fix it. It hasn’t seemed to affect the fish in the year it’s been like this, and we do make sure to keep the water clean for them.
In a year and a half, we’ve been very proud of ourselves - after little to no experience with fish, we haven’t lost one. We do have a co-worker of his mom’s who might be interested in taking the fish, as we would like to fill the pond in and reseed the backyard, but until then, we dutifully care for them. We won’t know anything about that until September when his mom returns to school.
Until this morning. ElzaHub made his usual trek to the pond to feed them, and found one floating, playing Dead Man’s Corner. We don’t know which fish it was, but I decided it was Buster to give us closure. We don’t know how old these fish are, so he more than likely just came to the end of his lifespan. I almost feel guilty hoping that the others are also about to hit the end of their lifespans.
So…one down, seven more to go.
Anyone want some pond fish?
E.
