Tuesday, May 23, 2017: Busy day, new carp

I knew this was going to be a busy day. I had an appointment for scheduled maintenance on the Audi at 9:00 am. The dealership is WAY out is West County, about a 30-35 minute drive with favorable traffic. Being so far away, we normally would drop off the car, take a loaner and get errands accomplished out in that area.

Today, my plan was to drop off the car, take a loaner and visit our favorite liquor store, Costco, grocery store and, finally, the Aqua World pond place where we bought our goldfish last Spring. We bought 10 goldfish and only seven are still with us. The other three croaked soon after we got them into the pond. The other seven made it through the winter and appear healthy. I expect they will be with us for a long time.

This time, after viewing what they had to offer, I decided to get three koi instead of goldfish. We went with the goldfish last year to test out the pond. Goldfish are much...much cheaper than koi. I selected three koi that had different coloration. They guy at the pond shop put them in a plastic bag with an air cap. He said that they should be OK for 30-45 minutes. He suggested letting them acclimate to the pond water temperature at least 30 minutes and preferably, an hour. I decided to go ahead and head back home in the loaner so that I could get them acclimating in the pond. I got them home and remembered all my keys were with the car dealer. I was still able to get their plastic bag secured in the pond and opened so they could get air.

When I got home, about two hours later, I released them into the pond. They are about the same length as the goldfish that have been in there for the past year. I see that it is recommended not to feed them for at least 24 hours after introducing them to the pond. I fed the existing fish before I turned the new ones loose and will not feed them again until tomorrow afternoon.

About 30 minutes after releasing them, we had a gully washer which dropped over an inch of rain in about 15 minutes.