Jul 25 2008
The Alternate to Koi
A few years ago as I was sitting in the lunch room at work, a coworker and I started chatting about gardens. I have to admit that upon hearing about her garden, or rather her parents garden, I was beat hands down. There was no way that I could say my garden was nicer since they had many of the features that I wanted in my dream garden. The gazebo, the well established flower beds, the gated entrance and the Koi pond. Upon hearing about the Koi pond, I began grilling her about their care during the colder months.
When she told me that her parents didn’t keep Koi anymore, I was a little surprised. “What do you mean, you have a Koi pond, don’t you?”
As it turns out, a Blue Heron had spied this little backyard oasis and found it to be the perfect fishing pond, much easier to scoop fish out of this water than out of the river not even 50 feet away. No matter how hard they tried, the Heron robbed them of their expensive Koi on a yearly basis an d even began inviting friends over for dinner.
Finally, in a last ditch effort to have fish in their pond, my co-worker and her parents took a trip to the local fish store. I’m sure that they gazed longingly at the Koi being offered but eventually moved past them and went over to the feeder fish. There they purchased about a dozen feeder goldfish for about 35 cents each.
And, from that point, they were pleasantly surprised to find out that they could have their fish and enjoy the sights of a Blue Heron in their backyard.
What they realized was something that I would never have thought of; the goldfish grew quickly and were fairly large by the end of the season. Sure they weren’t as flashy as the Koi but they provided splashes of orange and they were very inexpensive to replace when the Heron scooped them out of the pond.
So if you are looking for a cheap alternative for your fish pond, why not try a feeder goldfish.
Sirena Van Schaik
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