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Blessings and curses of a new year. The life of a pond.


preacher

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Hey all, what a lovely start to the year. Hot sunny days, awesome times down at the beach exploring rock pools with the 5yr old.

And then you come home to find your fish in the pond looking like salt... I thought some of them looked a little odd.

Where on earth the white spot has come from I don't know, but so far its taken 2 big inanga and all my bullies.

However, draining the pond to catch the fish I did make some wonderful discoveries. Tiny baby fish and even better tiny baby crayfish! Not sure if the fish are baby goldfish or bullies, but the crays are so tiny! Barely a cm long as they crawl through the mud.

Oh well, hopefully I don't lose anymore fish.... Still the pond could do with a breather for a while too.

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Oh no! :( very sorry for your losses

Whitespot outbreaks are not unheard of in the wild in summer, particularly in lakes and ponds where the water gets thermally stratified and can't mix so the lower levels become hypoxic and the top levels become too hot, squeezing the fish into a narrow habitable band.

Anyway, in your pond probably just the whole pond got a bit too warm, stressing the fish and making them more susceptible.

Unless you had quarantined AND treated all your fish before putting them in the pond, chances are some were carrying the parasite, possibly hidden in the gills.

How are you going to treat them?

At least once treated (assuming no more arrivals carry the parasite) this shouldn't happen again, but it is a useful indicator that things are getting a bit stressful for them. Time to plant a nice fast-growing ngaio or similar to make an umbrella over the pond ;)

Congratulations on your baby crays - very cool! Make sure you get some photos ;)

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Firstly congratulations on the baby Koura. Did you have a Koura in berry? They carry te eggs for a very long time before they let them go.

I agree with Stella about the whitespot. First thing that came to my head was the heat. Hope you manage to save them. Maybe you will have to put some form of cover to provide a bit more shade for them.

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Thanks friends, they have had a fair bit of water changes recently and I wondered if it had washed in from there. There were some new arrivals, but with the heat maybe I put them in too quick. Oh well, such is life. I didn't have the camera with me when I saw the crays so sorry, no picks. Though your right my big female was carrying eggs late last year, I hadn't seen her in a while. Funnily enough my bullies that I had in the tank in the house all died too, but I have noticed little babies in there also. There are mountain minnows in there, so it will be interesting to see if/what they grow into. The tank got a bit warm for them I think :(

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