Dan was given four goldfish for his birthday last October. At the time we had no thoughts of naming them. How could we? They all looked exactly the same. Not any more…
It turns out that one of the four is more adventurous than the others — we’ve named him Nemo…
(though it’s equally likely that he is a she). How do we know which one is Nemo? He is now about half the size of the other three fish.
Last weekend Dan found Nemo in a filter basket in our Potting Shed.
The water in our pond continuously circulates via a pump located in the shed. Water drains through the bottom of our lower pond, runs through pipes in our shed, and is then pumped into our upper pond — creating our waterfalls. An in-line filter captures leaves and other debris in the system (as well as adventurous goldfish).
Dan transferred Nemo to a Tubtrug …
and returned the escapee to our pond.
We immediately noticed that Nemo is much smaller than the other three fish.
We have been told goldfish will grow to a size relative to the size of the body of water they are in — the bigger the pond the bigger the fish. Judging by how much bigger the other fish are, we figure Nemo may have been in the filter basket for weeks or possibly months. Neither of us remember seeing all four fish together since spring.
It hadn’t occurred to us that one of the fish could have gone elsewhere. We had grown accustomed to seeing fewer than four fish because they often hide in crevices between the stones. Also, we recently discovered some baby fish in the pond and thought that maybe the mother was staying out of view during breeding.
Three days after returning Nemo to our pond I became suspicious regarding his whereabouts; I could only see the three larger fish. I checked the water filter, and sure enough Nemo was back in the basket!
I returned him to the pond…
and one day later he was back in the filter basket. The same thing happened the following two days.
Dan and I don’t know why Nemo keeps trying to leave our lovely pond (none of the other fish have), but we sure do admire his determination and adventurous spirit.
Concerned about Nemo’s repeated disappearances, we asked Jack to keep an eye on the pond.
All was going well until Jack took his eye off the ball.
Once again we found Nemo in the filter basket. After some thought I came up with the idea …
to put Nemo in our upper pond.
Now his only way out is over the waterfall. Our hope is that Nemo will grow in the upper pond; when we think he is too big to get into the drain we’ll reunite him with his mates in the lower pond.
We have yet to tell Jack the latest news regarding Nemo’s whereabouts.
live. enjoy. repeat.
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