As some of you know I have a koi pond. My largest tri colored is named Piglet. Well this last weekend we decided to enlarged our pond by removing the shelf in it, taking it from just around 875 gallons to 1300 gallons. It was a lot of work, my husband probably dug 2 tons of dirt out. We had to remove all the water and fish and put them in a kiddie pool with a pump and covered them with another kiddie pool. We started at 3 pm Friday and worked until about 8 or so. Covered the fish for the night. The next morning at 8 am everyone was still fine. I uncovered them while we were working on the pond so that there would not be to much heat trapped in there with them being covered. We in the middle of the day hubby decided he wanted to jump in the pool to cool off (not the kiddie pool LOL) We were out back by the pool less than 15 minutes. When I came out front their was blood all over the side walk and front entry way. I looked over and right in the sun was Piglet lying covered in dirt, dried out and not moving:( I grabbed her up really quick and stuck her in the pool. She floated belly up and was barely breathing. I felt sick and knew it was all my fault as I should have either stayed out front by them or covered them before leaving. I was holding her rightside up when Bill came around front and I told him what happened. He said he did not think she would make it but try pulling her back and fourth through the water to pull oxygen over her gills. I was not giving up, after an hour she was finally holding herself rightside up, moving her fins and her breathing was getting back to normal. Over the next half hour or so she went on her side and we immediately righted her again. After that she was better, started swimming but was not quite herself yet. About 5-6 hours later we were finally done and ready to put the fish back in the pond. We decided to catch Piglet first as to cause her less stress by getting her out of the way of catching everyone else. We placed her in the pond and started catching everyone else. When were were completely finished catching everyone...all 24 of them, we noticed Piglet was on the bottom belly up. This time when we got her to the surface she was not breathing. Bill told me he she was gone and I said okay (of course holding back that I just wanted to cry:() and right after that he said wait I think her tail just moved and her gills were now just barely moving, unless you looked really closely you would have never noticed. I sat down on the edge of the pond held her by her tall and pulled her back and forth in the water once again for about 20-30 minutes, then all of a sudden she was trying to free herself from my hand with little jerks but I was afraid to let go because if she needed my help again I might not be able to get to her quick enough. I held her for another few minutes and finally released her. She stayed right side up!! She is a little banged up but she is doing fine.
The one on the right is Piglet.
http://i196.photobucket.com/albums/a...DSC_0034-1.jpg
