The last day (for now)

Today was very busy. After the usual fish checks and feeding, I was taught how to bag fish properly. I say this because when Mark went to Japan to work for 6 months, this is how he was taught and they were very rigid about the correct way to do things (to be fair, my experience of Japanese methods has tended to be that they are effective and look good, so they had a right to be rigid)

I also learned about sashi and kiwa (the edges of red markings on koi) and how to retro-fit an air-driven return. More on them another day.

'Not much' says you? 'Let's begin with the bagging' says I...

1. Open out the bags (one inside the other) and find the seams.

2. Insert thumbs to depth

3.  Then use fingers to curl the top of the bag over

4. ‘Snap’ the bag so that it folds over in a neat line

5. Turn the bag until you hold it in the middle then ‘snap’ out again, using the same routine with thumbs and fingers. Rinse and repeat until you have a short bag with a thick rim.

6. Now catch your fish

7. He's done this before

8. Carefully into the basket, still underwater

9. Hey Presto

10.  Put the bag into the furthest end of the basket and slide it slowly along towards the fish. The water (and the fish) should enter the bag.

11. Like so

12. Gather the end of the bag, hold it securely and lift the fish to check underneath

13.  Pause for a good long look into each other's eyes (optional)

14. Place bagged fish in the bagging station (a suitable bath, in this case) and separate the inner and outer bags.

15. Gather together the edge of the inner bag in a fan shape in one hand

16. Gently squash the air out of it

17. Make a hole in the centre of the fan (which should have neatly extended as the bag was squashed)

18. Add oxygen so the fish can breathe. It should last up to 36 hours in this way (though ideally it will be in its new home long before then)

19. Now bunch the gathers and straighten them

20. Twist them tightly in a clockwise direction

21. You should end up with a natural loop that you can see through - if you can't see through it, the twists are too loose and the bag may come undone in transit!

22. Holding an elastic band with your thumb, wrap the leading edge repeatedly around the twist until you can loop the last bit over. It will be neat.

23. Push the loop firmly down and gather the outer bag around it, using the same method

24. Make sure the air's all gone

25. More twisting, looping and 'laccy banding

26. Voila! One bagged fish ready to transport

27. This is called a 'hard' bag, because the amount of oxygen makes the bag rigid. A 'soft' bag has slightly less oxygen, allowing the bag to conform to the shape of a box for transporting.

...and unbagging

1. Float your fish in your pond so that it can get accustomed to the temperature. You might want to drip-feed some of your pond water into the bag to accustom it to your water quality. This will likely be in your quarantine tank.

[A note on quarantine - this is a wise precaution to avoid introducing diseases or parasites into your pond, thereby protecting your established fish. Quarantine should last around 6-8 weeks, during which you will ideally heat-ramp your fish to ensure that no nasties appear once the temperature is optimum for them. This is mainly to protect against KHV. Choose some 'naive' fish (not your most expensive!) which you *know* haven't been exposed to KHV to buddy up with the newbie. In this way, if the newbie is an asymptomatic carrier of the virus, your naive fish should display symptoms if it is there to be caught.]

2. Once acclimatised, undo the loops and twists and 'laccy bands

3. Roll down the edges of the bag

4. To create a floating bowl

5. Carefully remove your fish, checking it's ok

6. A gentle splosh and your fish is safely in it's new home

I think I'll come back tomorrow and tell you about the air-drive return and the colours - that was a BIG lesson.

Mopping and sorting

The first item of the day is always feeding the fish and taking time to watch them, yes, enjoy them, and make sure they're all ok. Then filter screen cleans.

Then fixing a door into the new lean-to area next to the tosai house. It had been sticking a bit and needed some trimming around the edge of its corrugated plastic covering. This was achieved with an angle grinder using a thin disc (so the plastic didn't shatter). I also got to see the 4" stone disc (used for making the slits in the filter pipes - below) and a diamond disc used for cutting stone.

After tea-break, I got on with some cleaning while Mark attended to some customers. The tosai house (for those who don't know it) is rather large. It has a big, white ceiling and large, white walls. In the past few years since the tosai house has been up and running, these had begun to look a little grimy. Not lots grimy - on any other colour but white, you'd probably not notice, but attention to detail is key and making the area look inviting is an important part of making a sale (which is why the sales area is so pretty). So I was kitted up with a bucket and mop and I mopped that ceiling. Much harder work than you'd think and quite a lot of effort, working with both hands above my head for so long. I was pleased with the job I did though, and it was very satisfying to see how much of an impact I'd made.

We then did some netting and counting. Mark showed me how to net all of the fish in a 9 tonne tank in one fell swoop and then went to buy new light bulbs whilst I counted them back in (the customers from earlier had bought 300, another person wanted 200 and someone else wanted however many were left, so numbers needed to be confirmed. So I spent a happy half hour or so with a scoopy net and a clicker enjoying the shapes and patterns of the tiny, shiny fish as I counted them back in.

After lunch, more netting this time to move fish around. Fish with colour need light (either daylight or light with equivalent qualities) to help their colour develop and be strong and beautiful. So colourful fish were moved to a tank with a halide lamp and a number of the black-and-white shiro utsuris were moved to a tank without a light. Some of the larger fish were moved to a tank which had fewer, larger fish in it (to balance out the numbers in the tanks) and a few of the smallest fish were moved into yet another tank containing some of the late spawnings (further small fish).

The most memorable moment was when I was netting off and separating the showas, kohakus and yamato nishikis from the shiro utsuris and the odd shiro bekko and Mark wandered over and asked "Are you spending time looking at them?" I replied that no, I wasn't, not really, and he very quickly responded "Well you should be - it's important to develop your appreciation of them."

Lesson learned - effectiveness in breeding top quality koi isn't all about speed and efficiency.

In which things are maintained

Nose back to the (slower, Winter) grindstone and in with some filter cleaning. A project for this week may be to extend below an existing filter and add in a long, t-junction pipe to replace a water pump with an air pump (more effective, less expensive).

A visit was had from a chap at the Environment Agency, but no discharging was being done, so his visit was fairly perfunctory, though he enjoyed having a look in the tosai house.

Lee from LB Aquatics Consultants came to lunch to see Mark and Lisa, but kindly bought enough cakes with him to include me, as well. So I was also invited to lunch and we spent a great time mulling over such varied topics as the BKKS, the merits of various bad jokes, the best way to empty a silted pond, Israeli koi, Defra, the Sargasso Sea, veterinary competence in the field of koi and more bad jokes.

After Lee left, we carried on with clearing the banks of the reed bed - the bonfire was got going again and I tackled brambles with an axe while Mark chainsawed another willow tree. I arranged to come back again next year around spawning time so that I can get a better idea of how things are when Cuttlebrook's at a fuller tilt.

As it got dark, we moved onto the rest of the first set of filter cleans for the week. I *think* I'm beginning to get the hang of the process:

1. turn off pump and isolate system
2. 'boil' the air through the biomedia for a good long time
3. lift the standpipe and drain the filter
4. use the hose to jet-clean the screen and the screen-tank
5. use the hose to clean the inside of the filter
6. ensure muck is un-trapped from inside the pump hose at the bottom of the filter
7. replace standpipe and begin refilling - slowly, so you don't suddenly suck any fish down onto the bottom drain
8. switch the air back to from the central tub of biomedia and switch the pump on again, gradually opening the system up

Something I definitely know; three bad cheese jokes:

Q: Whaddya call cheese that's not yours?
A: NACHO cheese!

Q: What do you call a horse hidden in cheese?
A: Mascapone

Q: What did the cheese say when it looked in the mirror?
A: Halloumi.


The best fishy jokes we could come up with were;

Q: What do you call a fish with no eyes?
A: A fsh.

Q: What do you call a fish with three eyes?
A: A fiiish.

End of the first week - SO much learned

Today almost felt 'routine', as though I'd finally settled into the job.

We did the usual fish check (all fine)

I did some strimming.

I took a LOT of photos - all here in a neat album because there are far too many to fit on the blog. I'll annotate some of them so they make sense.

We did some filter cleaning. This is simple stuff, because the way they're set up allows for draining, 'boiling' of the air pump into the media - for a nice long time while you go for a cuppa, then some hosing and flushing and refilling and done! The most hazardous bit (according to Mark) is lifting the standpipe at the beginning, cos if you're not quick enough, the water shoots up your sleeve (I caught the moment it tried!)

I learned more about the colouration of koi. There are two types of black - sanke black, which tends not to extend below the lateral line, is preferably not on the head and may or may not have small black flecks in the fins; and showa black, which is all over the place (including below the lateral line) and often has nice thick stripes in the fins. Shiro utsuris have showa black, shiro bekkos have sanke black. Black on a kohaku is a shimi, and is a Bad Thing.  Black is called sumi.

I had to show you Suzie - Mark's homemade fry-sorter. It has 7 suction stations and works by magic (well, not really, but he said it's a trade secret it took him a year to figure out, so he's keeping schtum)

I strimmed another patch and learned how to do it even better (apparently I was being aggressive! Moi?) and found that unwinding nettles from a strimmer is not that fun. And quite sting-y. (I was offered PPE, dear college tutors - I refused the gloves cos once again I thought I knew better. The visor came in handy again though)

I got to clean the filter screens today, having observed them being cleaned in previous days. Mark talked me through one, supervised me through another, then let me do the rest. My responsibilities are edging upwards from 'observer' status, which is a good thing. Standards being so high at Cuttlebrook, this is no small thing.

There is a right way to wire a plug. This is it.

There is also a right way to hard-wire an air pump into an air system to supply the whole tosai house. This was done after we built a pretty stand of blocks for the pump to rest on (the wood which had been used previously was vibrating in time to the pump and making rather a loud noise, so concrete was the way forward)

Finally before I left for the weekend, Mark gave me a lesson in How to Catch a Koi after I complained that my favourite was being camera-shy.

Be gentle. Really gentle. And confident, but slow and calm.

And use the net to cut off the fish's exits (they only swim forwards, as a rule, so this is reasonably easy)

The fish stays in the net, in the water

The edge of the net tips over the floating crate

So the fish can swim straight in

Hey presto! A fish, cool, calm and collected. And gorgeous.

If you have cause to lift the fish from the water, hold it with its head towards you and don't grasp it, but cradle it with your hands, allowing them to move with the fish. Mark held up the goshiki so that I could get a better photo of its scales.

Oh! Last but not least - a very cool invention: homemade bar dividers for fry - the tinies swim through, the biggies stay in and you pop them in a different pond. Different sized gaps between the bars allow for grading of different sized fish. Simple and effective (and about £100 cheaper than manufactured ones)

A great first week. Roll on Week 2.

Second full day, in which I photograph some fish

First up after morning checks (all fine) was to clean the filters. The screens get cleaned daily and the filters get cleaned (at a minimum) once per week on the basis that 'prevention is better than cure' and keeping filtration systems squeaky clean is easier in the long run than dealing with skanky, furry, smelly, gunged up filters. By far.

Whilst Mark finished off, having shown me how to clean the filters (turn pump off, switch air to run into the barrel at the base, drain barrel, use hose to jet-clean the screen and around the bottom of the screen-filter bit, then loosen the pump hose in the base of the sunken barrel to wash out all the rubbish, replace hose, flush everything through, replace overflow pipe/plug, refill) I ran to get my camera and leave it to warm up in the tosai house. Some beautiful photos ensued - see all of them here. Thoush some of my favourites I'll post below.

Starting with this little guy trying to eat a bubble


You get a lovely (if slightly shallow) feeling of popularity when you enter the tosai house, because the little guys are all SO pleased to see you. It's a shallow feeling because really they only see you as a potential source of food.

Mark fed them so that I could snap them as they gathered around















These guys were my favourite pic of the day. The chagoi do seem to be living up to their reputation for being really friendly fish. They were keenest to come and see what the strange lady was doing putting a weird black box-y thing so close to their home. It was such a very splashable box-y thing, too!

The other thing I never knew - you can make a brilliant impressionist (or impressionfisht - see what I did there?) style photo by messing up the flash when trying to snap a tankful of shiny little koi. Great stuff.






In Other News
I learned how to strim. With a big strimmer. Mark taught me to use it and gave me all the PPE (ear defenders and visor thingy - thank GOODNESS for the visor thingy cos halfway through strimming, something 'thwunked' off it, about an inch from my eyes!) and off I went, while he spoke to a visitor.

I strimmed my little heart out. At first I thought I wasn't being effective enough, then I ended up being far too effective and ploughing a few little furrows with the strimmer. If you want the bank of your reed-bed thoroughly mangled, I'm your woman. Fortunately I got the hang of it pretty quickly and there's now a nice swathe of bankside about 30m long which looks lovely and clear. Mark was pleased, and that's really the point - I'm learning.

After lunch (and a quick massage of the old arms - city dweller - not used to strimming for an hour or so) we cracked on with the chainsawing (still not me) and the throwing of stuff on the bonfire, which Mark re-ignited in about 5 minutes using yesterday's ashes. It roared and burned and we cleared a couple more trees. Mark got a couple of pics of me by the fire, so when I get them, I'll share. There's a big loopy grin all over my face because it was great, great fun.

I am still learning though, not just enjoying myself - promise!