The death toll has been 10 koi, December through February…nine to illness and one in the bottom drain pipe. 10 koi remain and appear to be healthy now. Half of them have spent some time in the quarantine tank over the last two months but have recovered. We still are not sure what took out half of our koi since their skin and gills looked fine. Their symptoms were primarily uncoordinated swimming, almost like a swim bladder issue leading to a sideways death spiral. While our numbers look low for the spring pond, we have some koi waiting to come home. Three larger koi in San Jose, a couple of shiro utsuri tosai and a new karashigoi tosai. We should have plenty of pretty koi when the ponds open up.

After weeks of winter, the weather has been warming up and we had a record high day – somewhere in the high 50s. Lots of sun and plenty of snow/ice melting. The pond digger and I were out measuring and thinking about a new greenhouse for the koi. Our contractor also came out to talk about our equipment pit covers. We’re thinking about building a platform on the large pond’s equipment pit and a pergola structure that screens the small pond’s equipment pit. We’ll need to look for a landscaper to give us some ideas. We have some large willow type of bushes planted to screen the lower pond’s pit and today I noticed that the deer have really nibbled a lot. On top of nibbling they have chewed off the outer tender bark. I feel these plants will need to be replaced.

Can’t wait until we can get back outside on a regular basis – maybe in a few weeks 🙂