Are fish ponds contagious?

[Hotzcatz]

Does it seem like there is some sort of fish pond disease going around these days? My neighbor came down with one fish pond several months ago and now there are about a dozen in her yard. There's only one in my yard so far, but now a neighbor on the other side has two! Each one has different plants and fishes and decorations.....

[csgray]

Not contagious, but addictive. My brother has made a nice living in Florida supplying fish pond addiction for over 25 years, he says almost no one stops with their first pond.

Carol

[Hotzcatz]

Oh oh! There's one there already! Well, maybe we can put prawns in one with a small waterfall. Prawns are pretty tasty. Is water lettuce edible?

It is kinda nice to sit near the pond and wait for the goldfish to come out from under the floating water plants. We only have one goldfish in there so far, though. My neighbor's fish wait for her to come out and then they all flock (do fish "flock"?) over to the side for fish food and tickles. She says they like to be tickled and they do seem to swim into her hand but that might be from the food.

[Carey]

Just be aware of hawks & herons...
A few years ago back in the Chicago area, several ponds started losing koi (big expensive koi) Turns out a great blue heron had taken to fishing in the backyard ponds....
Many owners put up grids of fishing line & such, but the wiley ol' heron seemed to figure out every thing put up....

[Les C]

Great Blue Herons are very rare on the BI, but I've seen Auku'u (Black-crowned Night-Heron) take small fish from the pond in Kapoho Beach with the injured Green Sea Turtle. Hawks are not likely to take fish; Osprey are fish specialists, and they are also rarely seen on the BI.

A friend in Glenwood has fishponds with koi and goldfish. She belongs to a club for "fish people" and she got some pond vegetation through them. She discovered that she also got a lot of Apple Snail eggs in the process and now has a lot of them in her ponds. Their eggs are fairly obvious. The snails are round and grow to the size of a fist (of a medium-sized person, whatever that is). Apple Snails are a problem for the kalo farmers in Waipio Valley. I heard that they were introduced by someone who wanted to build an escargot-supply business. However, the restaurants didn't respond in a big way, so the effort disappeared. Unfortunately, the snails didn't. Interestingly, these snails are the preferred food of an endangered species, the Snail Kite, a raptor found in the Everglades area of Florida. If only they could be moved to Florida.... Of course, I'm not sure if these are the exact same species of Apple Snail that the Snail Kites eat. [This last paragraph was an exercise in tangential writing.]

[Carolann R]

[]...Carrie puts down her copy of National Geographic pondering the plight of koi pond-ers and taro farmers at the hands (LOL) of the apple snail.[]

Thanks, Les!

Carrie

http://www.carrierojo.etsy.com
http://www.vintageandvelvet.blogspot.com

"Freedom has a scent like the top of a newborn baby's head..." U2

[Greg]

I know of some folks that put in some ponds mauka on the Hamakua side. They got some funding from "Ducks Unlimited" for creating wetlands. Thought it worth a mention.

[Les C]

I've heard reports of Koloa Ma'oli (Hawaiian Ducks) being seen in stock ponds along Keanakolu (aka Mana) Rd. which traverses Mauna Kea at approx. 6,500' above Hakalau. If Koloa can be helped by providing more wetlands, that's a plus. I don't know if these stock ponds or the ones Greg mentioned have any fish in them, however.

On O'ahu, some of the best wetlands are the result of the creation of aquaculture ponds (Amorient btwn La'ie and K#257;huku - sorry, I tried to use a special character for a kahako, macron; the word that got exploded by code is "Kahuku"). During the winter, you get to see how many vagrant species of wetland birds actually make it across the ocean to the Islands. During the spring and summer, you'll see the native wetland species nesting and raising young. The BI lacks natural geographic features like this because it's such a young island. But creating large wetlands can provide a good start on the wetland habitat. The birds will find them.

What the BI has are natural anchialine ponds, brackish(?) ponds near the coast that have unique endemic(?) species of shrimp and probably other aquatic animals and plants. Carey can probably expound on this better than I can. But perhaps this is taking this thread too far afield.

[Kapohocat]

Do those ducks eat coquis like the runner ducks do?

[rbonplaza]

In case someone missed Beau's wayward Koi from February

http://picasaweb.google.com/bigislandhom...oodFeb2008