Tragedy in PondLand...
I don't really post many personal things in this journal anymore, and when I do it's pretty important to me. With that being said, I just have to get this out. We've had a Koi pond for about 10 years, and as of just this week we've lost most of our large fish. Possibly we will lose all of them soon. :(
My mom loves the pond, and spends most of her time off outside. Last month we had got a new addition, a beautiful orange butterfly koi that we named Linus. He was from a different place than we usually go to, and at first he seemed pretty healthy and outgoing. A week later, my mom spotted that he had some scales missing. She thought it was just an injury, but he was slowing down and would stay alone at the bottom of the pond. So, like we do with our other fish that have gotten sick, she picked it up and put it in a bucket with medication in it. It was a pretty strong medication for such a little fish, and there was salt in the bucket as well. Just a day later, the fish died. Everybody else seemed fine so we thought that the medication was too strong or the salt caused a chemical reaction with it. We've lost many baby fish before. It wasn't like he was one of the big guys that have been around for 7 years and were basically part of the family.
However, shortly afterward one of the large fish we have, Bones (so called because he is a "skeleton koi" that are black and white) started showing the same spots as the baby had. Then we realized the rest of the large ones had it too. So we medicated the pond, and slowly they showed signs that they were getting better. About three days later when the medication was about to wear off we had a rain storm. That night we lost two of the fish, Tiger (our most beautiful butterfly koi) and Spot. They looked the worst out of all of them so it wasn't surprising. Plus, the rain might have diluted the rest of the medication that was in the water.
So my mom did a water change, and then re-medicated the pond. Even so, a small fish we have named Bandit was found dead and Casper (the friendliest fish we have ever owned) and Bones looked like they were getting worse. The next day we found about 10 newborn fish in the pond, possibly from Tiger and Spot (who we assumed were females). They're cute little brown things with yellow noses- mom looked online and saw that baby koi don't show their colors until they're a few months old so they're probably very young. We're worried about them because they have been exposed to the disease.
Yesterday Casper and Bones were showing signs that they were improving, but they still had the visible bacteria around their gills. We thought that everything was going fine and they were going to make it. Unfortunately this was not the case. Casper died just this morning, and Bones is hanging by a thread. Two other fish we have, Whiskers and Stardust, are also sick. So far the rest of them seem fine, but we're worried about them too since they haven't been able to have food in about a week.
Why am I so upset about this? Well, koi are different than your regular goldfish. They have personalities, and can live up to about 20 years (or more) if you take care of them right. Casper would eat out of your hand and let you pet him. Him and Bones were the largest, and are about 7 years old. So of course when we had to bury Casper, my mom was crying. Bones and Casper were always together, and even though we saw Bones acting normally just the other day, he seems depressed now since his best friend has died. I'm hoping we don't lose him as well.
These are the only pictures I have of the fish on this computer, but I just have to show them to you guys so you can see how big and beautiful they were.
Tiger was the "mother hen" of the pond, and would always watch out for the little guys. We suspect that some of the babies in the pond now belong to her and Bones, who were most likely mating.
This is Casper, the friendly fish. We named him that because he was white, but as time went by he really lived up to his name. The orange one under him is Whiskers, and the other white one is Stardust, who are also sick.
"The Big Three", Casper, Bones (on the left) and Spot.
I'll probably post something sims-related later today.
I have a lot of silly pictures, plus I am going to re-do the pics that are in my userinfo. If you look at my sims downloads page, I have re-done the pictures there as well (specifically the Mace sisters) using my default replacements. All I have to say is WOW, look at Julia there!
I have also made a new Founder for pixel_trade which I will show, and I just HAVE to show you some spam of Bean and Marley, who, with the help of ACR, decided to become a couple.
Okay okay, here's one pic of them:
Don't they just look AMAZING? Marley transitioned into the mariachi outfit! :snicker:
Can't wait to see how their offspring look like.
Anyway, pixel_trade founder submissions are open and there's a lot of slots left.
A reminder about the new rules:
Only 2 sims limited to a person, they have to be packaged without cc, and if you submitted one in July you can't put one in this month.