It has been several weeks, perhaps a month since we gave these store feeder fish a new home, and a new chance at a nicer life in a natural (sort of) habitat. I make sure to drop some live food in there every so often, the immense caterpillar population around here supplies them with a nice proteinous meal.
They certainly doubled in size since their salvation.
Some days I wonder if they are struggling the way they school up at the surface .. just swimming around.. perhaps they are being affected by the recent plumb work we had done at the house.. which resulted in some softener salt being deposited in the drainage path into the pond.. so I wonder if they are suffocating or something.
I helped them out before the storms came, the last day before was dry and they looked desperate so I added fresh hose water in attempt to dilute out the saline water.
Then the next day the rains fell for a good 5 hours or so and replenished the bowl the natural way. If anyone with any insight or knowledge into the behaviors of these fish like this.. would be helpful? Google searching only does so much..
And then the rains fell..
In the delta of the drainage path the salt deposited and continued to add its dissolved contents to the pond... or perhaps the dam prevented it from doing so.. I will not know for certain without a test. But I am not drinking any of that pond water, and won't be paying bookoo bucks for a lab test. Perhaps Ill take a cup of the pond water and let it evaporate entirely and see what's left, in terms of deposited salts and filth..
