I like fish. I mean, I like the taste of fish. I've had fish that I've bought and I've had fish that I caught. Dead fish have never bothered me before. Until now. Grand Total fish deaths: 29.
Ok, ok they're just minnows. I've used way more than 29 minnows in my life to catch bigger fish to eat. This is different though. I want these things to LIVE. You would think I feel bad about the loss of my stock, or my time, or my hard work. Strangely enough I actually feel bad for the fish I've killed. I have some sort of attachment to them. Now that I think about it, I feel the same way about the vegetables I grow. If a plant doesn't make it I feel bad for the plant. Maybe it's not so strange after all.
The rain water that I used was full of algae. I didn't realize it at first but the murkiness was algae. I thought it was sediment or something. So, I've totally dumped out the 60 gallons of water and started over. I used hose water. It has just under .5 ppm of chlorine. If the remaining fish die because of chlorine poisoning I'll get something to treat the water. I don't want to do it now because the treatments I've seen for chlorine also kill ammonia. And I need that stuff to build up. We'll see what happens.
To tell the truth I'm feeling just a bit frustrated, but I know this will eventually work out. I just need to get over one hump at a time. I'm so glad there's baseball on tonight.
I hear ya. I picked up my system, including some fish, from 4 hours away and I was so worried about killing the fish. People tried to point out that it was probably less than $20 to replace them all. And I know I'm eventually going to kill them anyway. But right now, I'm responsible for their lives.
ReplyDeleteSo far (knock wood) I haven't had any deaths. But I'll be picking up 50 more 1" tilapia on Sunday. My odds of killing something will go up drastically. :-(
Good luck with those new tilapia. I hope to be upgrading from minnows to tilapia soon.
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