Fish SOS! Help?

[weldrwomn]

A gal in the neighborhood got foreclosed on and moved out sometime in the last couple of days (I hadn't been home). The guy who lives next door to her and across the street from me approached me while I was mowing and asked if I wanted any fish. I was confused, so he asked me to follow him. We go into the gal's highly overgrown back yard and there is a fish pond in really bad shape.

Most of the fish (some sort of carp) were belly-up, but there were a few that were not quite dead. I filled a bucket with some water and brought three fish home. The guy gave me an old tank aerator that he had. Anyway, so far, one of the three fish died and the others are looking lots better. I am going to go back over tonight and see if there were any others that were hiding from the heat of the day that are still alive.

Hubby says I keep them if they remain outdoors but he would prefer that I re-home them somewhere else.

I don't have any fish supplies to build an outdoor water feature and I know nothing about keeping outdoor fish.

Help!?!

 

[catmom2wires]

Are they koi?

If you have a tub or small trough, you can keep them in there as a "hospital tank." You might want to place a bucket turned on its side or something else that they can hid in inside the tank, to make them more comfortable.

Food isn't terribly important, as most fish can go a couple of weeks without eating. However, since you don't know when they last ate, getting some flaked or pelletized food soon would be a good idea. Just feed as much as they will eat in about 5 minutes.

If they are koi, you should be able to find homes for them pretty easily. Call the vets, etc, and put out the word!

Thank you for trying to help. I used to have outside koi, so if you want to PM me, I will help as much as I can.

Cally

 

[yosemite]

One of the problems you may run into is disease issues. Many folks with ponds are reluctant to take new fish into their ponds because it just takes one fish to have a disease to infect the whole pond.

 

[weldrwomn]

I managed to get the number of a local gal that rescues just about everything and she came out and got the fish. There ended up being 11 fish and two frogs. She said that she had never seen a pond in such horrible condition. She also said that the fish were just feeder fish, not koi.