The Fish Pond

This is a story of trial and error. 

For years, I had been planning in my head a fish pond that would be a center piece for our garden.

The collecting of the rocks, one by one was a big job but I finally got round to finishing the job.

My wife thought that it’s deep round shape was strange for a fish pond and so did the kids.

The minute the construction was over, they were in it with their friends, quickly discovering that if they ran in the water clockwise, they could create a whirlpool. The building of the deck around it just made it too easy to jump in.

Before one of them could drown, I decided it was urgent to plant a bunch of reeds and lilies and by and by it became quite lush.  I put in a filtration system (sand), and in the summer I placed a canopy over the pool to keep the sun from turning the water green. I bought about 50 small koi fish. It now definitely had the ornamental role it had been designed for.

But I wasn’t having much luck with the fish. Between those who didn’t like the change of scenery and those eaten by the cats, the survival rate was not great. Installing spikes around the pool solved the cat problem without stopping the thirsty ibex from popping by.

 But they were still dying at an alarming rate despite my consulting with all the university experts we have at hand.

Then one day, I got a call from a friend at the university, ‘do you want some koi?’ They were doing an experiment to see how fast they could ‘grow’ koi by playing with temperature and salinity.  The giant bins contained more fish than water, the fish were bumping into one another, several were damaged, most were by now blind so the experiment was judged a success but now they badly needed to thin out the stock. I took about twelve big ones. The problem was that this happened in the dead of winter. The fish had been living in warm water and the pond water was about 20 degrees cooler, the shock would kill them.  So we bought several plastic paddling pools and entertained the fish in our living room dropping the temperature of the water drop by one degree per day; a net over the top to keep our cats from eating them. Visitors were fascinated by a fishpond in the middle of the living room, I thought it might become a fad. This went on for about two weeks until the house stank of fish.  Finally we could wait no longer for the equalization of the water temperature, we just threw them into the pond and hoped for the best.

Surprisingly, they all survived.  At least, I thought, given the fact that I found none flotting in the water on their belley. But at first, the fish hid in the depths, there were days when you didn’t know they were there, what were they thinking? The reason I asked myself what they were thinking was because I was truly knocking myself out and I was getting no love from them.  Ben Freihof told me to try dog food.  I would put boiling water on the dried granules and when they had softened up and cooled down I would float them in the water and Ben was right, the fish were thrilled. Now, every day when the fish hear my footsteps they rush to the surface, practically jumping out of the water and when I put my hand in the water they suck on my fingers and allow me to caress them. 

When we have little kids to stay in the guesthouse, I take them to feed the fish, and it is a highlight of their visit.