Very soon after we moved into this house, we installed a big plastic cistern under our back porch -- the downpipes from half of our roof pour into the tank. This was to help to slow down the water that flows down the hill (we are at the top of the hill) so our neighbors would not have a river running through their side yard. It is not enough, but it is something. When the tank fills up, we open the valve at the bottom and let the water out slowly so it doesn't make a ravine.
But mosquitoes breed in standing water. We knew that already and we had a plan -- Jon went to the pet store and bought one of those bags full of little goldfish. They did the job. There were never any mosquito larvae in our tank. When Anna came to live here for a while, she got more fish and they became her pet project. She bought fish food (we had never thought of that) and fed them often.
The fish were extremely low maintenance. We did nothing but empty the tank when it got too full. They swam around and grew bigger, slowly. There were 14 of them. In the winter, the tank froze over and the fish went to sleep, we assume. We never saw them in the winter. In the spring they would wake up again and they had more elaborate fins and tails. They knew the routines of their plastic tank. When it rained, they cavorted in the bottom of the waterfall that came from the downspout. When we fed them, they came to the surface with alacrity. When we didn't feed them, they didn't complain.
Occasionally we forgot and left the valve open too long and the water all went out, except for a few inches at the bottom, so they had a much smaller and murkier living environment. Eventually it would rain and their house would expand magically.
But one day the tank overflowed and the water went down the basement steps, found the drain clogged, and went right into the basement. Ugh. Jon cleaned up some but was daunted by the project of ripping up the floor. We waited to see what would happen next. So far nothing has happened but eventually it may get moldy and he will get around to taking up the floor (he had installed a manufactured, inexpensive floor on top of the concrete, there is no carpet or anything). I told him next time it should be tile, in case this happens again.
So, when Jon was in Shreveport once the tank got really full and it was raining hard on a day that I had to leave for Loudoun. I was afraid the basement would flood again so I opened the valve. But then all the water went out and the fish were stuck in their tiny, dark puddle. No rain in the forecast.
It started to get hot and we worried that it might be too hot in that puddle for them. We tried to figure out if we should intervene. Finally Jon put some water in with the hose. The next day all the fish were dead, floating on the surface. Dang. After 15 years of easy living, we killed them with county water. We were sad that we had killed them. They had survived so much with so little help.
You would think that we would go and buy more fish at the pet store. But no -- there is an abandoned swimming pool next door at a house that will be torn down soon. Jon and Jim discovered there are about 100 feral koi in this pool. For the last few weeks they have been intermittently trying to catch these fish with various nets but the fish are too fast (I don't have time to make this funny but it is). They constructed different contraptions but the nets moved too slowly and the fish were not going to let themselves be caught.
On our recent 24 hour sojourn on the Potomac River, we did ask some fisherpeople for advice (I may have mentioned them before) and they talked about making a net that could be lifted from the bottom of the pool.
Anyway, this morning Jim just came over, triumphant, with 3 fish in a bucket and put them into the tank. He has a big interest in this because the mosquitoes affect him the most. It will take years to get these fish up to speed, and they may be disappointed in their new surroundings, but they have a job to do and I am sure they will get right to it.
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