... because the fish are in a bucket!
Here's the story: (Short version) I thought they were dead! They'd been living in disgusting pea soup water and now I'm afraid that if I put them in clean water, the shock would kill them.
The long version:
A friend gave me a plastic-form pond, about 90 gallons. I filled it up, put in a PondMaster 190 biofilter, and a week later added three koi (Dinah, Freckles and Dave Brown.) In no time at all, the water got uh-hu-hugly brown, so dark you couldn't see the fish, and it's only 16 inches deep! After a month or so the electric company cut down the trees that were shading the pond (I chose that shady location for the koi!) So, algae appeared, not the stringy kind, a bright green haze in the dark water. I got some Microbe-lift and Green Clean algaecide immediately and started both according to the directions. No noticeable improvement after 2 weeks, although it was fun watching the dead algae "foam" float to the surface.
At the end of week 3 of pond treatment (still no clarifying of the water), one of the koi (poor Dinah) was floating. Ironically, that was the only one that would come up to eat often. The pond is netted, by the way. I had seen Dave Brown a few days before, but Freckles had already been a no-show for a week.
I took the net off. Why? I dunno... I figured, if I couldn't see the fish, then nothing else would, either! I kept putting in food for the remaining fish, but never saw either of them. After a week, I dredged the pond with the fish net, hoping to see even a flash of white or orange, and....nuttin'. Crap. Holding out hope, I kept putting in small amounts of food (counting the nuggets to see if any went missing.) No shiny bobbing heads nomming, no missing nuggets. Maybe something saw them after all, or maybe they died and something nabbed the floating critters. Whatever, a couple of dredgings later I decided that the pond was empty.
Today is a week since I stopped feeding the water and two weeks since I decided that all of my fishies had gone to Davy Jones' Locker. Figuring I would empty the disgustingly filthy pond, I started siphoning out the water. It got down to about 5 inches deep when a blur of the faintest orange caught my eye. Cheese and rice, there were two fish in the pond! What the --?? After gaping and several repetitions of "There's fish in the pond!" (bad grammar, yes, but I was overexcitedlywhelmed.) I pulled them out of the pond and put them in a bucket of the pea soup water. Which is where they are now. I cleaned the pond and put in the water I always have standing by, about 12 gallons (I was planning on filling it up with the hose and starting all over.)
And, as a slap in my pond-ignorant, impatient face, there was no sludge at the bottom, just some rocks and dirt that had fallen out of a potted plant that accidently went for a swim. And, it didn't stink, just smelled like a lake. So, the PondMaster is doing exactly as it says on the tin. When I lifted the filters out, I didn't let any of the water run out of it, so it's still bacteria-ized. I added the "purge" amount of Microbe-lift and now I'm afraid to put the two shiny critters in the clean, dechlorinated, algae-absent water!
Is it safe? What say ye?
