Tragedy in the Garden

At the end of last week my fish started dying. I found one of my Bala Sharks face up in the pond one morning. Poor thing. I fished him out and tossed him in the compost. That afternoon a second shark died. That was a bit odd. There was no sign of disease or stress. I had put in two new Shovelmouth Catfish, but Sharks are jumpers - if the other fish had harassed them they would have lept out of the pond.

The next day the reamining three sharks died. That hurt - I liked my curious little sharks. They were already up to six inches - only half their full size - and I was looking forward to seeing them full grown. I figured there was some mysterious shark disease going around.

Day three, and lots of fish were acting funny. The fat goldfish was swimming upside down. The yellow cichlids were bumping into things. No one was eating. I didn't know what to do. In the next two days the two clown loaches, both adult yellow cichlids, and one of the juveniles went KO. I couldn't figure out what the problem was, and was worried that I'd lose them all.

I finally changed all the water. That seemed to help - the survivors started eating again. Then yesterday I found the culprit: a new brand of fertilizer spikes I had used for the taro.

So now I need to restock. The survivors: four Ryukin, one adult and one spawn albino cichlid, a striped cichlid, one shovelmouth, and a few [not sure how many] yellow cichlid spawn.

Still missing in action: my eel [who I never see unless I clean], the pleco [who I rarely see], the golden algae eater, the juvenile red shark, the blue cichlid, one of the striped cichlids, and the four remaining juvie yellow cichlids.

That just hurts.

Heading to the North Shore after work for the Hale Aikane weekend. Ken rented out the beach house, Dirk is cooking, I've got a load of wine from Fujioka's - I'm ready to go. This is my last day with Forestry, and I'm itching to get out of here and laze for two days on the beach. Waves are big, and the Eddie Aikau might happen. Here's hoping ...