Video of Tree Heart and My Way (new Pekingese parti-color puppy)

ART IS WHERE YOU FIND IT ...

ART IS WHERE YOU FIND IT ...

Cleaning the Koi and Goldfish Outdoor Pool

Koi Pond Regular Weekly Maintenance

PhoenixKoiRescue.com

Shorty@ShortyPen.com

Water Changes
The MOST IMPORTANT thing you should do with your pond, is to remove at least 15% of the water in the pond EVERY WEEK, and replace it with new fresh water. Doing this solves many problems, and dramatically increases your water quality, and let your koi's immune system keep them healthy. Real koi kichi (koi nuts) change 15% of the water every day. Evaporation is a big issue here in Arizona. As water evaporates, it leaves behind minerals in the water, so if you only "top off" the water, what happens is the minerals build up and screw up the water quality. Keep in mind that koi came from rivers, which are continually supplied with fresh rain water.

The biggest reason that people don't do regular water changes, is that it can be a pain to do. Also very dangerous, if you forget and leave the hose running & change too much water, you will shock your fish and kill them. I have koi in tanks, for for me it is as simple as installing a drain valve in the side of the tank at the 15% level. So I open the valve, the water drains down to that point and I come back later to close the valve, and fill it back up.

Most people have ponds in the ground, so a gravity drain is not a solution for them. Another technique I have found that is very effective, is to setup a special pump that is used for your regular water changes. The automatic shut off pump hangs over the edge of the pond, and is suspended so the pump's intake is down at the 15% level. Then you use a crank timer switch (like used in steam rooms, or public bathrooms) to run the pump for the appropriate time. If the pump stays on for some reason, it can only drain down to the 15% level, and will not pump your pond dry. Every pond is different, so you need to figure a solution that works best for you.

Filling Your Pond - use a sprinkler
Tap water has clorine in it, and koi naturally investigate waterfalls (and streams of water) so if you fill your pond with a hose, the koi will swim right up to the hose and start breathing water that has a concentration of chlorine in it. This may burn their gills and cause damage. One solution is to spray the water with a sprinkler head. This spreads the new tap water over a larger area to quickly dilute it, plus the aeration helps to evaproate the chlorine from the water.

Filling Your Pond - Use a water timer
One really good solution is to use an yard irrigation type water controller like used to water your lawn. The average size backyard koi pond is 5000 gallons, and 15% of that is 750 gallons, which takes about an hour to fill from a garden hose. So you can see how easy it would be to turn on the hose and accidentally forget about it. If you talk to others at your koi club, you will find that many people have accidentally left the hose running (sometimes overnight or all day) and killed all of their collection by accident.

PH and Baking Soda / Oyster Shell (chicken grit)
An ideal PH for koi ponds is around 7.2 to 8.2. Ponds built from concrete and with a large amount of rocks in the system tend to keep their PH balanced just fine. Ponds which have a plastic liner and all plastic parts tend to have problems keeping their PH at an acceptable level. If your pond PH drops below 7.6, then you should add baking soda to increase the PH. Add 1 cup per thousand gallons, per day until the PH is back up to the proper level. A better, longer lasting solution is to add some crushed oyster shell which will slowly dissolve and buffer your water, so it will keep a stable PH. Crushed oyster shell is commonly sold as "chicken grit" at local feed stores, about $10 for 50 lbs. Just put some chicken grit in a net bag, and put it in your pond near water that is flowing.

Filter Flushing & Cleaning
You should flush your filter at least once per week. The good bacteria in filters aerobic, and the newer colonies perform the nitrate conversion process at a much faster rate than old colonies of bacteria, so by flushing the filter you get rid of the anaerobic muck, and also sluff off the old colonies of bacteria, so new ones can form. I have a home made barrel filter that I installed a knife valve in, so for me it is as simple as turn off the pump, open the valve and stir with a stick. Whatever filter you have, configure it so that it is easy to do, so you will do it more often.

Full pond clean out - WARNING - you can kill all of your fish!
Good filter designs collect water and debris from the bottom of the pond so you never build up a muck layer. However many ponds I have seen in people's back yards are not configured that way, and they have layers of muck, leaves and debris. That muck layer builds up over time, and then occasionally owners do a big "clean out". This is very dangerous and can kill all of your fish in just a few minutes. What is happening is that that muck layer creates an anaerobic environment which harbors toxic bacteria and substances. If you disturb this area while the fish are in the pond, it will release those toxins in the water and kill the fish. So if you want to perform a big "clean out", you should remove all the fish to a temporary holding tank (like an intex swimming pool) and then perform your clean. After the clean out, get the pond running again for at least 3 days, and then you can start to replace your fish a few at a time.

My pond water is clear, doesn't that mean it is healty water?
No. Clarity has nothing to do with the quality of the water. Ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate are all toxic to koi. You can have perfectly clear water, and kill your fish, or significantly stunt their growth. To see what levels you have, you need to test your water with test kits.

Feeding
Koi can be pigs and consume mass amounts of food, and on the other hand they can survive on small amounts of food. The more you feed, the bigger they will grow, but keep in mind that you need a filter that is big enough to handle the amount of food you feed. Koi can survive and be healthy on as little as 0.5% feed rate, per day. On the other hand, owners looking to get maximum growth are known to feed up to 3% feed rate per day. If you feed less than 0.5%, then the koi start to become stressed, and start having health issues.

The way to calculate your feed rate (the amount of food you feed), simply calculating the body weight of the koi you have, and figuring the dry weight of the food you feed. So if you have 29 lbs of koi (464 ounces of koi), then a 1% feed rate is 4.64 ounces.

You should split the food and do multiple feeds per day. Koi are grazing fish, and their system works better getting a little bit of food at a time. A common feeding schedule is to give them some food first thing in the morning when you wake up, then some right after you get home from work, and the rest right before you goto bed. If you can split it into 5 feedings per day, they can process the food much better.

NOTE: If you find uneaten food in your pond, then something is wrong. Either you are feeding too much, or you have water quality problems, or your filter isn't big enough, or something else. Also see below about the temperature to stop feeding.

How To Calculate The Weight Of Your Fish The simplest method I have found is to make estimations based on the length of the fish. What you do is place something in your pond that you know the length of, such as a decoration or even just a stick. As the fish swim past the item, you can see how long they are compared to that item. You can even take photos as they go past, so you can look at the pictures to help with the comparisons. You then make a list of all the fish you have, and how long they are. Now that you have their lengths, you can use the following average lengths to figure how much they weigh. This may seem complicated or laboursome, but you really only need to do it once or twice a year.

<><>

Typical Weight of Standard Fin Koi, Per Their Length (including tail fin)
4"     0.62 oz 5"     1.21 oz 6"     2.09 oz 7"     3.33 oz 8"     4.96 oz 9"     7.07 oz 10"     9 oz 11"     12 oz 12"     16 oz	13"     20 oz 14"     26 oz 15"     30 oz 16"     40 oz 17"     45 oz 18"     56 oz 19"     66 oz 20"     77 oz 21"     82 oz	22"     102 oz 23"     120 oz 24"     134 oz 25"     150 oz 26"     160 oz 27"     180 oz 28"     210 oz 29"     230 oz 30"     150 oz

How To Calculate The Dry Weight Of Your Food
First you need to figure what container and scoop works best for you. I personally use a peanut butter jar and it's lid as the measuring cup, however many people use a big plastic jar and a real kitchen type measuring scoop. Whatever measuring scoop you use, put 10 scoops of food into a container and measure it with a postal scale. Then take that weight and divide by 10, and you have a pretty accurate weight of one scoop your food. Write that on the scoop, so you know how many scoops your fish need. For an example, I found that my peanut butter jar lid holds 1.75 oz of my pellet food.

Homemade Koi Food
I have seen a number of large healthy koi that were fed regular koi pellets PLUS large amounts of table scraps. I have become convinced that feeding your koi fresh foods is essential, because processed & dried foods seem to destroy the nutritional value of the ingredients. There are lots of recipies on the internet of how to make your own koi food.

For the food I make, I take koi pellets and run them thru my blender dry, this makes a powder. I set that aside, then blend up a bunch of vegetables to make what looks like a milkshake. I then mix that by hand with the powder, plus wheat germ, wheat flour, corn meal, and other random stuff to thicken it up. I split that up into portions that are the right size for 1 week of feeding. Then I move one portion to the refrigerator, and pull off chunks daily to feed to my koi. Not very scientific, but my fish like it. Also I feed cooked shrimp, and cooked tilapia.

Winter Break - No Feeding
A koi's metabolism is mostly based on the temperature. At temperatures between 60 and 87, you should feed the full daily amount. At temps between 56 and 60, you should cut the feed rate down to 0.75% or less. After the water temp drops to 52 and below (and stays down there), you should stop feeding until the temp rises back above 52 and stays there or above. The koi go into a slow state and mostly sit on the bottom of the pond during this cold time, and they don't process the food very well. This is a normal part of their yearly cycle, they build up a lot of fat in the fall to carry them through the winter. Your filter will mostly die off also, so in the spring when you start to feed again, feed lightly for a while to build the bacteria up again.

Hot temperatures -- reduce feeding
One of the problems we have in Arizona is the water temperature can rise very high, I have seen temps as high as 96 in my tanks. One summer, the water stayed at 96 for about a month and a half. The koi reduce the amount they eat when the temp gets above 88, so if you notice this, then cut back on the amount you feed.

ART IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

Art is in the eye of the beholder ...

My Way Today

Castaway's affectionate call name is "My Way" or just "Way" .... No Way, yes Way! She was born July 27, 2010 and is 60 days old today, 8 weeks and 4 days, or 2 months in this life of hers.  She was attacked by her Mother at 2 weeks of age which I believe happened because her Mother might have been suffering from

Eclampsia

Eclampsia is the sudden onset of clinical signs associated with low blood calcium levels (hypocalcemia) that occur in lactating (nursing) bitches. It is caused by loss of calcium in the milk and is often combined with poor dietary calcium intake. This condition is different from eclampsia in women, which is related to blood pressure abnormalities prior to birth.

Predisposing Factors

More common in dogs than cats

Toy and small breeds most commonly affected

Large litter size

Highest incidence with the first litter

Poor nutrition during pregnancy

and lactation

Possibly worsened by use of calcium supplements

during pregnancy

Seen most commonly two to three weeks after-birth, although can be seen as late as six weeks after whelping (giving birth)

 

or some other severe medical problem which caused her to turn on her puppies in order to save her own life ... the owner gave 3 out of 5 surviving puppies to Adell Lantz to rescue and then Adell offered this one to Jeri who traveled to Palm Springs to get her and brought her to my home to see.... Jeri showed me the "scratch" on her eye and I noticed the eye injury needed immediate vet care and so that is how I have her now.

 

This morning  I observed her eye is healing back to normal  and the small depression filling in.  There might be some slight scar tissue ... too soon to tell ... and if so the vet will prescribe some drops to treat it.

 

Her eye did cause me anxiety and distress, and of course the need to treat it with medicinal drops and oral antibiotic does require additional time during the day and night.... This is in addition to learning Way's "norms" and making sure she was eating and getting enough water and fluids  as one would with any new puppy....  My heart and home is a little larger now with Way in it. No Way would I part with her now. She has made me Way happier than life without her.  Way to go as the saying goes.

 

Way does love baked chicken and is eating some Little Caesar too ... I made some puppy formula but used canned reg milk instead of goat's milk and she isn't eating it .... I made some rice and chicken broth mush and she isn't eating it either ... Way really is a dainty eater, but she is gaining weight .... This morning she weighed in at a little over 2 1/2 lbs, and she is still small enough to fit into 2 hands cupped together .... Way has her little puppy biscuits and dry food always with her water in case she wants to chew and nibble. I bought some beef liver for  .89 cents a lb at Ranch Market yesterday and she will most likely enjoy it.... it will mash it with some cooked carrots, spinach, and other vegetables that I eat as a stew cooked in pork neck bones.

 

My Way is really a pretty little charmer and very alert, very responsive. I enjoy admiring her special beauty and especially like her parti markings....   Way seems to be content and even happy with her new home and living quarters.... Way is ecstatic when I take her outside to see the other Pekingese with her tail wagging receptively as they gather around to "inspect" the new one in their midst. 

 

Until Way develops a stronger immunity, I am not letting her outside ,and when she visits outside it is always with my protecting presence.  I have tried to keep her as unstressed as possible giving her lots of time to rest quietly to improve her eye and health healing.  The artificial tears drops the vet said for me to apply in between the medicinal eye drops 4 times daily is helping a lot to keep her injured eye wet and comfortable.

 

A friend came over yesterday to see her. She  too thought Way was cute as could be, but was not pleased with my calling her Way.... ??? Oh well, I like the name because it is most suited to Way's guiding spirit.  She is the Way to my heart.

 

As I write this,  my Way is finishing the last of her Little Caesar  meal choosing it over her baby formula of rice, chicken broth, and ground up puppy dog food Jeri gave me ....  yesterday she was jumping and barking at her toys ... grrrrr woooooooof waugh! I HAD TO LAUGH OUT LOUD! LOL!

 

Way has a 10 inch Cabbage patch doll, a tennis ball with rope at either end,  a stuffed lion about 10 inch, and a lamb chops soft toy about 8 inches, and several other toys like a styrene squeeze hamburger, and small 6 inch cabbage patch dolly,, etc......  She plays with them all and every time I look at her playpen they are moved around .... she also likes sleeping on her soft toys...

 

The white white with brown and black spots  gives her a look almost as if she were a lovable, cuddly stuffed toy herself.....

 

My friend,Suzi, said that Way would be well fed and she is right about that ..... all of us here in my home are well fed .... LOL .... but I am getting lots of exercise working around my home in various projects and maintenance, and even though I may look like a Sumo wrestler, I do feel good even though I am not up to running and turning summersaults like I did in high school cheerleading ..... reminds me .... I need to mow my lawn again (good exercise).

 

I often think about my bouncing across the the basketball court waving my pom-poms in the air yelling out the cheers leading the crowd at the games ..... they were fun and made good memories for me.  At that time I had a sleeve white Pekingese that I loved as my pet named..... you guessed it .... "Snowball" ... When I went to college, she stayed with my parents who continue to love her in my absence ... and when I got married and had young children of my own, we bought a parti Pekingese puppy from the Kansas City downtown pet store which we named "Gidget" ... Gidget was also a sleeve and looked a like like Way ..... in the 1950's most Pekingese were under 10 lbs and since then they have gotten larger and larger and larger ..... I had one couple who came to visit us bringing their 25 lbs Pekingese who they had trained to do tricks.

Removing Salt From Your Fish Water Before Re-use Watering Landscaping

Aquarium salt is widely used in the keeping of fish .... but little caution is provided warning that disposing of the salted water can harm the landscape, etc and really shouldn't be put down the sewer either .... in fact, I suspect many fish keepers are improperly disposing of their salt water from their aquariums ... (even freshwater fish water uses aquarium salt to keep the fish healthy) .... As a gardener and nature lover, I realize the permanent damage done to soil if salted .... salt accumulation is a global problem!

 

So since some of my Koi pools have significant amounts of salt, in the water (those pools that don't have water plants), I need to learn how to remove salt from the water so that I can reuse the water directing it safely to my landscape ...

 

A search of Google provided this technique..

 

How to Remove Salt From Water

By Shaun Juan, eHow Contributor

updated: August 22, 2009

I want to do this! What's This?

The cheapest way to remove salt from water is by using a solar water distiller. Think of a solar distiller as the same natural process of the sun heating water in our oceans, turning it into gas and then condensing into a cloud that drops unsalted water back down to earth. You can replicate this process by following some simple steps. These steps can also be used to remove salt from water in a survival situation.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Clear plastic sheet, 5 feet by 5 feet
• Shovel
• Containers to hold water

1. 1
   Dig a hole roughly 3 feet by 3 feet and 2 feet deep. If you are in a survival situation and don't have a shovel, use anything that will dig a hole, including your hands. Dig your hole in an area that receives the most sunlight possible.
2. 2
   Place you container in the middle of your hole. Make sure your container is dug halfway into the ground so it will not tip over.
3. 3
   Use another container to transport the salt water to your hole. If you do not have another container in a survival situation, use the same container you used in Step 2. Make sure the bottom of the hole is thoroughly saturated with the salty water.
4. 4
   Place your plastic over the hole. Make sure the middle of the plastic is sagging a bit over your container in the middle of the hole. In a survival situation, any color plastic will work, but it will take longer to evaporate.
5. 5
   Anchor your plastic over the hole. You can anchor the sides of the plastic with whichever material you have readily available--tent stakes, dirt, sand, rocks. Just make sure you have a tight seal around the plastic cover so the water vapor cannot escape.
6. 6
   Weigh down the center of your plastic sheet. Ideally you can use a small stone placed on the plastic directly over the container in the hole, but you can use whatever you have available to weigh it down in a survival situation.
7. 7
   Wait 3 to 4 hours for the solar distiller to complete the distilling process. Your solar water distiller works by the sun evaporating the salty water into a gas (which leaves the salt behind). The plastic cover stops the water vapor from escaping the hole, water condenses on the underside of the plastic, gravity pulls the water toward the center of your weighted-down plastic and the unsalted water drips into your container.

Read more: How to Remove Salt From Water | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/how_5188575_remove-salt-water.html#ixzz10ZFHkede

 

Anohter useful lesson was this one which basically provides a better understanding of how of how the above process works ... this one is a small scale removal of salt from salted water ...

 

How to Remove Salt From Salt Water

By Claudia Henning, eHow Contributor

Excerpted from .... 

http://www.ehow.com/how_5127351_remove-salt-salt-water.html

 

Remove Salt From Salt Water

All images courtesy of Photobucket photo pool

The easiest method of removing salt from salt water is a process called distillation. The water is heated, turned to a gas, condensed and collected in a purified form. The salt will be left behind. Follow the steps below and be amazed at how easy it is to replicate the distillation process yourself.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Plastic bowl Small glass Plastic wrap Small rock Small pitcher of salt water (tap water with 2 tbsp. of salt added)

1. 1
   Large plastic bowl
   Pour a couple of inches of salt water into a large plastic bowl. One similar to the bowl pictured will work.
2. 2
   Place a small glass upright in the middle of the bowl. Make sure the glass is shorter than the edge of the bowl and that it remains dry inside. A juice glass would work wonderfully for this.
3. 3
   Cover the bowl with clear plastic wrap and secure tightly with tape on the edges. Keep the empty glass upright and center as you cover the bowl.
4. 4
   Use a small rock to create the condenser.
   Place a small rock on the center of plastic cover, directly over the empty glass. It should bend the plastic wrap in toward the glass without breaking through. The angle will aid in the collection of purified water. Place the bowl carefully in the direct sunlight. The heat from the sun will heat the water, evaporating it to a gas. The gas will hit the inside plastic covering and condense back to liquid as it cools. The liquid will then drip down into the glass. This is called solar distillation. The process distills or purifies the water. The longer it is left in the sun, the more pure water you will collect. What will be left behind in the bowl is the salt.
5. 5
   Remove plastic cover and try a sip of the water in the glass. You will find it to be salt-free. Distillation is done on a larger basis by providing artificial heat to salt water, collecting the steam on a cooled condenser surface and routing the purified water into a separate tank.

Read more: How to Remove Salt From Salt Water | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/how_5127351_remove-salt-salt-water.html#ixzz10ZGbr5b6

__._,_.___

IT'S MIDNIGHT AT THE OASIS

IT'S MIDNIGHT AT THE OASIS

It's midnight at my Phoenix water garden oasis home (My Song Pekingese Park), and I am awakened by a small lonely whimper. My new puppy that I took in as a rescue Sunday morning that day needed comforting reassurance and attention. I sleepily picked her up and then remembered that I need to give her a name since I planned to be taking her into the vet this morning for him to inspect and treat her eye. The left eye had been injured a few days earlier by another puppy in her litter. The name I chose for this new puppy and the one that came to my soul searching mind and heart was Californian Cherokee Castaway.

This puppy was from a litter whose Mother killed 2 of the 5 puppies, 2 weeks of age. The owner of the puppy's Mother brought the entire remaining litter into Forget Me Not Rescue in Palm Springs for Adell Lantz to save and hand feed nurture to an adoptable age. Needing to find homes for these puppies, Adell called Jeri, a friend of mine, to see if she wanted one of the female puppies. Jeri did agree to adopt the puppy Adell had selected for her, and when the planned rehoming time arrived, Jeri and her husband traveled from Phoenix to Palm Springs to get her new 7 1/2 week old puppy Saturday, September 18th.

Next day, early on a Sunday morning, Jeri brought the puppy to my home for me to see. I quickly noticed that the puppy had a serious eye injury (commonly caused by litter mates playing together too roughly digging a toenail in the eye). I told Jeri that I would take the puppy to my vet, Dr. Svoboda, Palm Glen Animal Hospital, for his expert care and treatment Monday, and I agreed that I would adopt this unpapered (but pure bred) parti-colored Pekingese puppy. We weighed the puppy and learned it was only 2 1/4 lbs. Normally, Pekingese puppies at 8 weeks are about 4 lbs or even more, but this puppy's parents were both sleeves (very small and under 6 lbs) so the puppy's weight was about right for her development.

Jeri and I were both very distressed by seeing the little puppy's serious eye injury, and we realized that vet care is expensive but also necessary. Also, Jeri really wanted to acquire a show quality female, registered Pekingese, one that she could breed to her Champion pedigree AKC registered male (hopefully one that I would have available in a few months time). My heart opened up engulfing Californian Cherokee Castaway, and now she is mine... and I am hers.