Fish hospitalization, Day 8: Back to school

Together again

After four days without a further death, all 28 survivors are back together again in a 150 liter basin I picked up at an agricultural supply store on a trip to Brittany back when we about to do the repairs of the fish-pond-in-the-fountain that had sprung a leak sometime before, worsening the consequences of the major freeze we had in January 2009 as a result of the lowered water level right before the whole thing froze solid one night. 4 survived, and of those, 2 survived this bout of illness and returned to rejoin the other survivors today.

I treated the water with more of the JBL Ektolfluid that is intended to treat fin rot and other skin infections for fresh water fish. It is supposed to be effective against aeromonas, pseudomonas and columnaris, and judging from the result this week, it does appear to be effective. About three of the fish showed signs of fungal infection on top of the bacterial infection, and they are looking better. I also added 1 tablespoons of sea salt (gros fleur de sel de Guérande) for every 5 gallons (19 liters) for a salt water concentration of about .06%.

Wednesday, the plumber comes to fix the outdoor spigot, and we'll be able to refill the fish-pond-in-the-fountain and return the 28 survivors to their home.

Meanwhile, I'll be watching them very closely now to see how they are acting, and if anyone needs to be isolated again.
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The abandoned fish pond in the background

Fish hospitalization, Day 7: Fish out of water

Stayin' alive

We are at 3 days without a death.

Not that we haven't nearly had several accidentally do their best. At least 5 now have gotten so fed up with their container confinement that they have lept to an uncertain future. I found the last one the other morning on the guest room floor, next to the table on which his bowl sat.

What I have learned is that a fish who leaps from his container once does not do it again, and this, not because he dies, but because he learns how miserable it is to lie around, a fish out of water, until someone happens along to find you and put you back in in a hurry.

Water, it turns out, is highly overrated for fish. At least for an hour or two. Who knows. Some period of time. I won't be testing it to find exactly how long.

Tomorrow, I think, will be the day I transfer them to two large volume bins, all except perhaps two, who still show signs of fin rot.

Lesson learned, anyway: Fish do learn.
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Goldfish hospitalization, Day 5: Stability and Impatience

Contrition

Contrition, or a larger container. Whichever it is, and I am going for the containment factor, the fish who lept yesterday to a miraculous survival, faced with one dog, one cat and no water upon landing, is still alive. And she let us know again last evening that she has had enough and isn't taking anymore, circling vigorous and insistent circles up against the sides of the galvanized steel bucket we now call her home, water flying in all directions. One particularly forceful round and leap found her head rising over the bucket's lip, a good 20 cm or more above the water level.

Surprise! It's I!

She nearly ended up in my dinner plate.

We were at table, and her bucket was just to the side of my right elbow. I was keeping a close eye on her. She will have to survive until the spring before I can be certain she is a she. I have a doubt.

This morning, I hid under the covers, putting off the moment I'd have to go over to the petite maison and check on the patients in the guest room. I had no reason to believe I would find anymore casualties of whatever caused this population wipe-out, but I couldn't know. Enough is, after all, enough, and I had had enough of finding little bodies floating flank up in the water. When I made it out there for morning rounds, I was gratified to find everyone alive and active, petitioning for a return to the pond.

"C'est la preuve qu'ils sont habitués à un plus grand espace et à ne pas avoir des limites," commented my husband, listening to yesterday's leaper race around the inside of the bucket.

I didn't find that so amazing. When you have swum around in a 180 cm diameter, 70 cm deep pond with 6,000-something liters of water, rocks and plants and hiding-places and shelters, why wouldn't you protest against finding yourself in a soup or salad bowl, even a bucket?

So, today I repeated the daily routine, carrying the bowls, vases and buckets in turn to the kitchen, scooping up the first liter of medicated water from the big plastic bucket in the sink in setting it to my side before carefully emptying most of the used water, pouring in the liter to reassure the poor fish and then filling the container, adding a pinch of gros sel de Guérande, a bit of an oxygenating tablet and a little bit of food before carrying the patient out to the Moroccan table in the garden. It takes an hour and a half for the 28 surviving fish. I'd happily have spent 3 hours had all 60 survived.

The little leaper

They are impatient, however, all of them; two more lept today. I found one little one lying between the containers, several away from its empty one, practically glued to the tiles of the table, and another particularly muscular  one, one of the last I found and retrieved from the fish-pond-in-a-fountain -- oddly, the last ones out were among the least vulnerable. If I think about that, it makes a kind of sense --, was missing from his red plastic basin, and like yesterday's, was lying in the grass covered in grass cuttings and dirt. He also jerked in my hand when I picked him up, mercifully, and appears regretful of his impulsivity.

The large leaper

My doctor husband wants them to spend at least 3 or 4 days with no further demises in their individual containers before I begin to group them in a larger capacity container, while we wait for the plumber to come and repair the outdoor spigot so we can refill the fish-pond-in-a-fountain. I don't know if they can take it.

Time to go check on them again.
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He lept and survived, the excitement never ends

Dirt-covered goldfish

Great God in heaven.

I walk out the door to the garden compulsively, every few moments, to go and check on the fish in their containers. I had let a little more time go by than usual, watching the women's Masters, and I was supposed to be heading up to the stable. I wandered out the door, just to see, one more time, just to make certain everyone was alive, still. Just out the door, I look over, and on the other side of the table covered in fish I see the dog Fia and Shadow, both concentrating on something between their two heads and four front paws, separated by inches.

Then, Fia's head dipped and lifted, and something moved. It looked like she had torn at her old rawhide bone that is now a flatted piece of hide. It was about the same color, but no, Shadow wouldn't be interested in that.

I hurried across the terrace and looked between the two of them, and there was a dirt-coated object in the very shape of a goldfish. Fia looked at me, and then looked back down.

"Oh my God," I breathed, staring at the still and lifeless fish there on the ground, several of its scales in the marks from Fia's paws, where she had scratched near it, surely trying to keep it alive, one of the last two originals, as far as I can tell, from before the freeze and the subsequent thaw.

It looked like breaded sole.

"Oh my God."

I leaned down and picked it up, and it jerked in my hand. Alive? It was still alive? Covered in dirt? I hurried it into its empty bowl and carried the whole thing into the house.

A photo. Take a photo. 

"Right. A photo."

I hurried the bowl out to the edge of the fountain and returned to the house to grab my D300 and AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm DX VR lens, and the strap caught on the edge of the low table, sending it to the terra cotta tiled floor with a sharp noise.

"Damn. Damn damn damn."

The center ring had shifted out of place. I pushed it back, tried the telescopic movement and noted that it caught.

"DAMN."

I ran back out to take a photo, cursing myself, and thanking the dog and cat. First, they had not eaten the fish. Not only had they not eaten it, Fia had not ripped at its flesh. She might have tried to pick it up, though, like she has done with the frogs she finds in the lawn from time to time. Second, had they not stayed by it, I would not have noticed.

No, that's not so; of course I would have seen the empty bowl and found the fish lying in the dirt.

A blade of grass stuck out of his tail, and he was covered with dirt. I took him back inside and lifted him carefully in my hand, making certain to keep him under the water, while I gently wiped the dirt from his gills, his flanks, fins and face. I picked up the pail from outside and added more medicated water, slid him and the water from his bowl into the larger container and set it down next to the computer and Googled How long can a goldfish suvive out of water?

The this came up:

I managed a pet store for 8 years.

Occasionally, we would open the store and find fish on the floor that had leaped from the tanks in the night. Most of the tanks had at least a partial glass cover on them (he ll, they were inventory!) but some fish are determined. Most of those fish were dead. Some were alive.

Now the alive ones were mostly determined to have leaped within the hour before we opened, which means they were out of water for only an hour. These fish were still wet and covered with slime. 

However, I did find some fish whose bodies were dry and covered with lint and debris because they had thrashed about on the ground and when I lifted them as dead, to throw away, a few surprised the he ll out of me by moving around.

For a fish's body to be dry but the fish still somehow alive I have got to say at least 6 hours out of the water. A fish produces slime to lubricate its body in times of stress and that's what kept those little guys alive for that long.

However... Even when we put them back in the tanks, the ordeal of lying on a floor, stressed and thrashing and covered with debris...very few of the "jumpers" made it back to good health.

A lot died right away. Most developed a bacterial or viral infection and died shortly afterwards. Some rotted off a lot of their fins, hung in there, survived, and lived scarred up. (profits down the tubes.)

Fish jump.

COVER YOUR TANK

Thanks. Like by now I do not know this.

So, tonight each bowl is getting at least partially covered with plastic film. I think. Maybe it's not worth it, given that fish, as the pet store manager knows, are determined.
....

Wiped off and alive, for now

Fish hospitalization, Day 3

Cat water bowl

No. It's not what you think. Shadow is just doing what she always has; she is drinking from the fish water. Usually, she is up on the edge with her neck bent to get that little pink tongue to the "pond" surface, but the recent catastrophe has made her life a lot easier. Now, she merely needs to stand at the edge and drink from a bowl. The fish is in no danger from her, only from the fin rot and the fungi that have come to feast on the bacteria still present on her tail fin.

I believe this one is a she. I can't remember. It's less important than getting well and returning to the fish-pond-in-the-fountain.

Yesterday started out a better day; everyone was still alive. Then, three small gray young ones died, one of my favorite orange and white young ones threw himself from his hospital room while I was out getting more, different, better, who knows products to treat them, and expired, and this morning saw the demise of one whose swim bladder was affected. Still, I found another larger gray one from this year in the nearly empty "pond", and I know there is still another, a little pink one my husband saw the other evening, we have not been able to catch and isolate. A furtive little guy.

Blasted swim bladder

All the others seem vigorous. We must be down to just under 30 fish.

I counted. 28.

I also bought a test kit for the water. Granted, we were a few days past when all of this began, and the weather was gloriously sunny and hot yesterday, for a wonderful change from the rains of biblical proportions (and they appear to have returned during the night), so the results might not be what they would have been over the weekend, and all the week before, when it was raining without stop, but they were all normal. It's not the water quality that did the fish in, so what was it?

Was it the shubunkin, caught between the reeds and the wall of the fountain, whose body had rotted in the water, that was responsible for the proliferation of bad bacteria? He had clearly been there for a little while, but I had not thought to scrutinize that hidden spot until I saw the others dying and becoming weakened, sick. Was his death the work of one of the neighbors' cats? Every now and then, a fish disappears, and we wonder if it is the cats or a heron, up from the Seine down below, just past the field on the other side of our garden wall. Or, was he just the earliest victim? How many days does it take the body to turn to nothing but fin and bones?

It's time to bring them in their bowls, vases, and various containers out from the guest room to the garden, change their water and medicate again. If no one else dies between now and tomorrow morning, I might put them all together in the large black plastic container we bought for a similar sad purpose when the fountain was leaking three years ago.

Please do not let me find that anyone suddenly took a turn for the worse since I last went out to visit them earlier this morning. I am developing a thick skin, but enough is enough.

I still haven't found a trace of the maman fish, who was probably responsible for a vast part of the now deceased population. I miss her.
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This one is missing its gill

Container fish pond

Hospital rooms

Container gardens are normal. Container fish ponds are not.

The first fish I saw, lying on its side in the fish-pond-in-the-fountain, was last week. I don't remember the day. It had been pouring, raining cats and dogs for hours, days on end since I was able to get the lawn mowed before the truck came to collect the bin of garden cuttings and grass clippings Monday evening. I felt a stab. I care about the fish. I told myself that it was the violence of the rain; it had made the water level rise above the edge of the brick ledge and the fish had gotten trapped out of the water, then fallen back in after it died.

Then I saw another.

It's not possible to believe that this could happen to two fish, at the same time. I removed their bodies and kept a look-out. The next day, there were more dead fish. And another, one of the fish from the original population before the big freeze in January 2009 killed nearly all the fish, leaving only 4 of more than 40, was looking very iffy. Reading that post today, I can't even believe that I could write a seemingly tongue-in-cheek poem about their loss. I was sick about it at the time, but it had to have been the joy at finding 4 still alive that left me nearly giddy with some kind of relief that returned some of my humor. By yesterday, I had no good humor left. None whatsoever.

I yelled at everyone. I had removed more than 15 dead fish, and every day there were more dead fish. 7 alone yesterday morning before we made the decision to remove all of them to individual bowls, large liquid measuring cups, vases, plastic food containers and Tupperware. I cursed myself for not having more clear mixing bowls or at least Tupperware.

The day before, having spotted one of the original pinkish fish clinging to the wall of the pond, another at its side, I knew others were fragile; I was going to lose more. You can just tell. They become lethargic. I went to the garden store and bought enough salt to treat the pond water and the last remaining bottle of fungicide, and I had picked up a box of "powerful" all-purpose tablets to dissolved in their water. The only problem was that they each treat 30 liters and are intended for aquariums, not individual containers of many volumes for fish in isolation. I had to get a somewhat large, handled flexible plastic basket I use for cuttings and fill it, a half liter at a time, with 15 liters of tap water from the kitchen sink, pour the dissolved capsule into it, and then mix that medicated water with an equal part of regular tap water, bowl by vase by container until the 34 fish I had retrieved were rehoused. It took more than 2 hours.

We began to drain the 6,000 something liter fish pond with a hose into the bottom garden, leaving a bit in case there were more fish in there somewhere.

That night, we moved all the containers to the guest room in the petite maison to protect them from predators, and this morning, there were 3 more dead fish, one small one from this year, one large red-orange fish, and one of the triplets. I know most of my fish. They have characteristics that identify them and stories.

The maman fish, my personal favorite, the one who always got fed first, racing across the water to me, her mouth out of the water and working to take the koi stick proferred from between my thumb and forefinger, never appeared. I couldn't remember the very last day I had seen her. It couldn't have been long before the heavy rains began. She must be gone, like my most gruesome discovery last week of one of the large shubunkin, half decomposed with only the head remaining, caught between the wall of the fountain and the stalks of pond grass and reeds. I don't see any evidence of her body, but it could be hidden from my sight. Still, I found all of the dead fish near the surface. Another had disappeared some time before. He was a red-headed, compact shubunkin I had treated for some illness or another several years ago and saved, and who had been particularly sexually assertive this year, hence the number of baby shubunkin in the pond this season.

While I curse our house and dream every day of moving away, the one thing that has kept me from doing enough work on it to sell and go away has been the fish-pond-in-the-fountain. The life in it fascinates me. I photograph the fish and the frogs who have chose to make it home and to breed there more than nearly anything else in the garden. To lose the fish is like losing small, scaled, colorful friends.

I removed the dead ones, added them to the plastic bag with yesterday's bodies, carried them to the trask bin and set to work repeating yesterday's task, making 30 liters of medicated water to add to another 30 liters of plain tap water, changing the water for 31 fish. Some appear to have red sores. Others gill or fin rot. Some of those also have fungal infections along the fin edges. Some seem to have nothing at all wrong.

Usually, I would bury a dead fish. There are too many. They are gone, so what does it matter what becomes of their bodies.

Later, I spied another small gray baby fish in the pond and removed it to a Pottery Barn cereal bowl of its own.

The frogs are still there. I see bubbles coming up from the mud at the bottom and occasionally a bronze-colored snout and two round eyes peer up at me, or a tinier green and brown frog will perch on the edge of the bird bath that once sat in the middle tier, between the cupid and the large one that is still there. The cupid supports one side of it, down at the bottom of the pond.

The Shubunkin that looked terrible yesterday seems better this afternoon. Several never looked like they were suffering in the least and are quite upset with me for this disturbance of their life and imposed isolation.

See the shubunkin at the upper edge of the lily pad

In happier days, October 7

I don't know what went wrong, but I suspect the pH dropped too low, causing a lack of oxygen and weakening the fish. I don't know. I didn't test the water right after all the rain, but heavy rainfall lowers pH. Still, a gradual change in pH won't negatively impact the fish, while a crash in the pH level is often fatal, but then you see peeling skin, not necessarily red sores and fin and gill rot. Perhaps there were just too many this season, many of the younger fish born since 2009 coming to sexual maturity this year and having produced a wonderful bumper crop. We were so proud and happy. I had estimated the population had climbed over 50, and having removed more than 25 dead fish and still having 31 alive today, I know there were at least 56. You need about 75 liters for one fish, and half that much for each additional fish. If our calculation of 6,000-something liters for our fish-pond-in-a-fountain is true, we have tons of extra water for many more fish.

All I can do is try to take more preventative action and better care once these survivors are able to return to their habitat. If no more die, we will have lost about half the fish, and of those we lost, approximately half were born this year and half were older. Right now, there are 14 from this year and 18 from years past, and if Darwin is right, they are the fittest.
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The first past, looking to future races

Fibs and Mark, heading companionably to the warm-up ring, Saint-Cloud

The rites and rituals, the rhythms of the racetrack comfort. The days of waiting for a race finally over, the moment to saddle up, walk and mount in the presentation ring to head to the track provide their own pleasures, small but real ones. The tight circle of professionals and friends gathered at the saddling box; the horse solid and sound, brushed, braided and in every way burnished to a high shine; the sounds of others calling out to one another and horses clopping past; the details of the preparation unchanging one race to the next, day after day. It's always the same, and always a little bit different within that sameness.

There is the relaxation of the nerves. The horses are all here, and the preparation is done and as much is known about one's own horse as can possibly be known. Less is known about the other horses. The racing papers have given their probable odds, and the bettors have made their own opinions known. A list of favorites is drawn up, and you may agree or disagree. You will never know enough about each horse, each jockey and the conditions out there to know who is right until the race is run and over. It will please you, comfort you, surprise you, disappoint you, but it will never leave you indifferent. If it could, then you probably don't belong at the racetrack. You need either a new profession or a new hobby, unless you are a lad or hot walker. To be honest, they look indifferent enough often enough.

Saddled, Fibs headed out to walk with the others, those who had just come off the track and were cooling down or drying off after their showers, and those who were warming up, staying limber for their race to come, whether the next one, or another after that. We'd come with one horse. Some trainers, like Cédric Boutin, had horses standing in several adjoining boxes along the main alley, others out walking, and still others heading to or from the racetrack.

Hellos and news, les bises are exchanged with other trainers, owners, familiar lads. Remarks made about their horses, their chances, their results. Congratulations or encouragement, knowing nods and consolations. Nothing is long-hidden at the racetrack. Everyone knows what your horse looks like, what your racing record is, how long you've been at it, and how you've done.

"T'as fait quoi?"

"6ème," with a shrug, the inimitable Gallic one, and a self-effacing smile, an eyebrow raised, "il n'avait plus rien. Ben".

"Ben. La prochaine fois alors."

"Ouai, la prochaine."

It's never necessarily or even likely going to be the case, but that won't keep you from the racetrack. You have owners, they have horses, and you must enter them in races that suit their talents and abilities. The professionals need to make money, usually; the owners need to enjoy themselves, and not to lose their fortunes, great or small, or not to be worthy of such a description in the first place. The horses need to do what thoroughbreds do best: gallop with other horses and try to beat them.

In the presentation ring, the horses paraded around us, their number blankets white against the green grass, the green leaves and their dark and supple bodies. The jockeys for this race, a 1600m (8f) 13,000€ and 17,000€ claimer for 5-year-olds and female jockeys walked from the locker room across the winner's circle and joined their trainers and owners. Smiles and greetings, instructions exchanged, photos taken, the television cameras rolling (but you don't pay attention to them), the jockeys are led to their mounts and given a leg up. Some horses take it in stride, others buck a little, considering a full-out rearing up. Lads and owners-enjoying-being-lads calm their charges, and one by one they head to the track to gallop easily toward the starting gates, bettors taking their last looks before casting their bets, if they haven't already. The public is sparse. It's a lovely June evening, and the restaurant terraces are full all over Paris and in the center of Saint-Cloud.

Fibs accepted his jockey and headed to the track like a professional. It was his 30th start. He knows his job, and that job is fine with him. He is an honest and considerate horse. We watched him go and headed, by ones and twos, up to the Owners' and Trainers' Lounge above the grandstand and the post to watch the race on the television screens. We'd come out to see them come up the homestretch.

Heading out to the track

Fibs and the other horses entered their stalls without the least fuss. They were 5 and older. They'd been around long enough to know, and they were all healthy enough to find a race a pleasant prospect on a sunny evening. Before we knew it, the bell clanged, the gates opened and 9 horses charged forward. Two took an early lead, and the rest remained bunched together.

"They're being stupid out there like that. Damn. Fibs has his nez au vent."

It was true. Carla and Fibs were on the inside toward the middle of the following pack. He had no benefit of a draft. They came on, positions only slightly changed heading into the final turn. Fibs remained on the inside.

"OK. That's not bad. She gave him the shortest ride around. Now."

But, rather than the surge forward we expected, following the lead horses who ought to be tiring and retire the distance between them, Fibs travelled out past the two horses behind him toward the outside. We stared at the television screen. I knew what Gina was thinking, "He's hanging badly, but he runs straight."

"He's never done that before," she said. And then he slowed to an easy gallop, heading toward the post like he had the jockey's mother on his back on a Sunday morning on the trails. The other horses, most of them, anyway, continued the race, and one won, 4 placed, and Fibs tripped past the post like he was anywhere but at a race course.

"That was a strange race."

"Indeed. I have never seen anything like it," concurred Sebastien. We looked at each other and blinked, followed Gina down the stairs, out past the horses who had had the good fortune to remember this was a race and enter the winner's circle to meet the jockey.

"This is the part I dread," I said to her young niece. I don't think she asked why.

We heard that he travelled beautifully all through the backstretch and into the last turn. He was a wonderful ride. A real pleasure. But she hadn't liked the footing along the rail coming into the homestretch and pulled him to the outside. He stopped, she explained; there was suddenly -- nothing. My mind flipped back to Elbow Beach. She was fast, too, but she failed to finish. Still, this horse had won races. He liked this distance. He didn't like heavy going, and the turf had soaked up early summer rainstorms.

"I wonder if he didn't take being pulled to the outside for being pulled up." Sebastien nodded.

"I think it is possible, too."

We were, quite simply and quite frankly, perplexed. Here was a horse who had run more than two dozen times and knows his job, and all you had to do was let him run straight and find his own footing.

Later, after his shower and drying off, after simple chat and laughter (it is enjoyable, win, place or lose, when you are with friends and the sun is slanting through the trees on a hill above Paris), I walked by myself to my car in the owners' lot. The attendant with the bright and good-humored eyes who had greeted me asked, "Alors, qu'est-ce que votre cheval a fait?"

"C'était étrange. Une course très étrange." He nodded, listening. "Juste après le dernier tournant, le jockey l'amenait vers l'extérieur de la corde, et je pense qu'il n'a rien compris." He nodded again and smiled.

"Soumillon fait souvent ça."

"Mais, ce n'était pas Soumillon."

"Vous auriez peut-être meiux fait de rester à Roland Garros," he said, and smiled his sympathy.

I had arrived 2 hours earlier a litte out of breath from the stress of the traffic in Boulogne-Billancourt and Saint-Cloud, having gotten up to leave half-way through the second set of the second women's semi-final. Maria Sharapova was on her way to securing her place in the final, although Petra Kvitova seemed to be finding the resouces to maybe cast doubt on the outcome. It wasn't easy to leave, but the stunned sound of my trainer's voice saying "Ohh-kaaay" on the other end of the line when she called and asked where I was, and I had replied "Just thinking about leaving Roland Garros now," was enough to remind me that owners have duties, too.

"Mon entraineur m'aurait tué," I replied, smiling back, feeling a little conspiratorial, and stepped toward the other young attendant, holding my door open, and placed the euro coins cradled in my cupped palm into the space of his own.

"Je vous remercie, Madame."

"Cest moi. Bonne soirée, Messieurs," and I climbed into my car, hoping not to stall heading out of the owners' parking lot owing to my high, wedge heels.

It's time for more sensible shoes, as long as this violon d'Ingres remains remotely sensible, and at least I got my rayons de soleil to make Fibs' coat and my silks shine, even if the performance was anything but bright and shiny, for whatever reason. Next time out, June 23rd at Amiens. Having done his first race in France, he is free to enter a far wider range of races, and better luck next time. In racing, luck is better than genius, they say. At least Jane Smiley says it.

For more race photos, click here.
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Grazing after the race, Fibs hears horses galloping in a later race,
his full concentration is on them over on the track.