I was going to drain and clean my pond today, but we have "weather" coming, and I was afraid I wouldn't have time to completely clean and change the 1000 gallons before the storms rolled in.
So I cleaned the three tub water gardens instead.
In the 50gal tub, with lilies and totally covered with w. hyacinth, there are fantails and one mud turtle baby - all three fantails were dead. One looked like it had been dead a week or so. The other two looked recent, perhaps within 24 hours. No signs of injury.
I simply don't understand why so many fish are dying all of a sudden, some with no marks on them.
I was trying to find the turtle, because my guess was that he had escaped and gotten into the koi pond, and that's what caused the bite and other wound to my two kio. But I found him dead, too! He was all tangled up in the roots of the water hyacinth. In fact, it was really odd - the roots had worked their way along the joints inbetween the scales on his shell, and there were tiny root hairs growing up from his shell.
A mud turtle would normally hibernate on the bottom of the tub, or in one of the lily pots. I'm guessing he died during the winter and floated up, and then the hyacinth continued to grow, and just grew around and into him.
I am hating myself. Wish I had brought him indoors for the winter. He's native to this area and should have survived outdoors, and that's why I left him out. The other two water turtles (a musk and a sideneck) I have indoors and are doing just fine.
