Demise and Survival

The pond and its residents have been a trial lately. Firstly I found a fish (the same one that was sick a while ago) with horrible wounds down its flanks: I couldn't see how it could have been attacked and did wonder whether it had got itself wedged somewhere and hurt itself trying to get free, so out of the pond and into the hospital tank it went for recuperation. There it remains, I hope slowly healing but clearly unhappy: the fish never like being in the hospital tank, tend not to eat anything and look very miserable during their exile. Then it became clear that one of the others was carrying eggs which it eventually laid, though being a young fish and having had them inside for some time they seem to have all been duff, which was a dreadful waste of energy on her part and that of the male fish who pursued her round the pond. Then a day or two later I found the female fish dead, with the same pattern of wounds as the sick one - less severe, but in her case apparently more deadly. Clearly something had happened as the pump had been shifted (stood on?) and the netting disturbed. I rearranged it so it is very hard to get anywhere even near the water.

But then I did a chemical test and discovered that the pH of the pondwater was sky-high, possibly because of the amount of algae present and/or a brick leaching lime into the pond. High pH makes goldfish very dopey and affects their ability to feed and so on. So I did a big clear-out, rearranging the pond's stones and scrubbing off as much algae as I could.

In the course of this I cleaned one of the plant baskets which holds some weed and noticed something that shouldn't have been there. It turned out to be a small cheap digital watch that I had lost some months before: I had had no idea where it was, and it had sat beneath the water all that time. It has lost about a minute and not long after I retrieved it the alarm went off. It does say 'Water Resist' on the front and so it has turned out!