Something Fishy?

byKariLee

789 followers

8 years ago

This is a story about the vastness of the internet, the unlimited amount of information, the size of the world"s population...

...and my fish.

This is the third summer since we built our koi pond, or more accurately, the big hole filled with water in our back yard.

We dug the hole in 2014. We filled it with water. We added a skimmer, a bio filter, a UV filter and ion filter. We planted some aquatic plants for further filtration. We installed a bottom drain that circulated water through a series of jets positioned strategically around the pond. We gathered flagstone and rocks to give our water hole a more natural appearance.

Then...drum roll please...

TAH Dah!

we added some fish!

Yep, we had worked very hard and built our beautiful koi pond. Our relaxing "stay-cation" water feature.

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By fall all our fish were dead. More than $150 worth of fish. And I had named each one of them.

The summer of 2015 we tried again. We purchased a mixture of koi and goldfish.

Again I gave each one a name so I could become rediculously attatched.

After a few weeks the fish were becoming sick and had external parasites. By now it was obvious that my relaxing koi pond was causing enough stress and heart ache to take 10 years off my life!

We were able to drain the pond enough to catch the fish and isolate them in a barrel where we could medicate them, and yes! They all lived!

We were able to keep the fish alive through what felt like the longest winter to this very stressed out and worried fish mom.

This is our third summer with our big, relaxing, expensive hole in the back yard filled with water, and fish. And I do a head (or fin) count every day to make sure they are all well.

Kari's koi pond

A couple of weeks ago we noticed two tiny baby koi swimming in the pond. That was a real surprise since we were certain any fry hatched would simply be sucked in through the bottom drain and never be see, Tiny as these little ones are they are now too big to go down the drain. We were so excited!

In the past few days our baby count has risen to at least six!

This is a picture of my dog, Ginny, watching the fish.

So how is this a story about the vastness of the internet, the unlimited amount of information, the size of the world"s population?

For over a year before we dug out one bit of lawn to make our pond we spent hours online researching echo ponds and koi. After many months of research none of the mistakes we made were in any of the information we had gathered from the internet. We wasted $100s of dollars after putting our faith in many incomplete sources of information.

The lesson I learned...

Before you give up on a niche because it seems to too popular, look at the competition. Think about the information you have to offer. Is it different than everything your competition offers? Is it more complete? Can you do better?

There are a lot of experts out there, but are they all helpful?

Believe in what you do

You just might help someone