The New Fish Aquarium

We had put some baby Koi in the pools above the water fall but sometimes it was hard to see them.  The water could be stirred up and murky and I didn't know whether the fish were there or not.  At one time I had twelve small koi but their ranks had thinned due to the local kitty cat population, many owls, raccoons and any other creatures that fancied an easy meal.

Finally I built some screened tops for the two pools and I had one koi left.  But I lost sight of him eventually.

 My brother came for a visit November of last year (2012) and did a repair to the spillway of the waterfall.  We had to evacuate the water from the pools and Joe spotted an orange and white fish about ten inches long hiding in the mud.  I caught him with a pool skimmer and the long-lost fish had grown quite a bit.  Apparently the conditions in the pools were good for koi growth.  I took him and put him in the large pond and hoped he would join the school of koi who live there.

I bought 7 more small fish.  I put them in the pools and now they seemed protected but they were very hard to watch.  They would dart about when I dropped some fish flakes in the water to feed them, but they were hard to monitor.

There are two "jon" boats here and I decided to trade one for a fish aquarium.  I wanted to watch the fish as they grew.  I looked on Craig's List and sure enough, there was a guy willing to trade a fifty five gallon aquarium for "something of value".  I called him up and suggested we trade the aquarium for the fourteen foot boat.  He thought it over for a day and called back willing to make the trade.

He brought the aquarium over to my place and set it up for me.  We loaded up the boat into the back of his pick up and the deal was done.

I filled the aquarium with water from our well and added two gallons of pond water as well.  The dog was watching all of this and wondering what was going on.  Next, I went down to pools and began taking out the water with a siphon hose.  It took about forty minutes for the water to go down enough to see the koi.  I scooped up six of them and two sun fish that were there as well.  I carried the bucket full of fish back up the hill to the house.  Shadow could smell them and began his happy dance.  Did he think these fish were being served for dinner?

The fish took to the aquarium very well.  And the dog is absolutely fascinated.  He follows them as they swim through the tank and tries to sniff them through the glass.  He will lunge at them and they will scatter.

When I let Shadow out of his crate in the morning, the very first thing he does is to scamper over to the fish tank and visit his new friends