Our lower pond has been taken over by string algae! The algae had gotten so thick it was clogging up the bottom drain. The pond digger decided that drastic action needed to be taken and he drained the pond. Over ten hours, he thoroughly scrubbed the walls of string algae. While the pond was being cleaned I spent some time filming and photographing the tosai. It was nice to see them up close since I have been a little limited in mobility with a leg injury.
Sixteen tosai in the lower pond…
The newest koi add a nice shot of red into the pond. While I really love the black and white shiro utsuris, having red colored koi is a nice contrast.
the new koi went into the lower pond with the rest today
We also moved a few koi to a friend’s pond. Nora, a large omosako shiro utsuri…Ika, a 20+” shiro utsuri…Lemonade, a hariwake…Robin Hood, a 12″ midorigoi…Chip, a 14″ sanke. We’ve decided that if we are not going to show a koi in the future, we’ll probably give the koi away to friends or take to the UMKC koi auction. We really do have too many koi and hope to be a little more disciplined about the number of koi we maintain each year. Of course building another pond might be a solution.
Midorigoi – Robin HoodSanke – Chip
So here are a few photos of the pond cleanup:
The koi seem to like the string algae to hide in and to eat. The string algae darkens the pond and I think it makes the pond a little smelly as well.Lots of scrubbing by hand – the pond digger works very hard to keep our ponds nice.All the tosai are back in their cleaned up pond – looking forward to seeing how it looks tomorrow morning!
Of great interest or a remedy for insomina – lower pond tosai swimming around in the garage temporarily while their pond is being cleaned 🙂
