Still in patchy blog mode. We've got a couple of sick fish, which means some additional morning maintenance tasks, which puts pressure on the time I normally set aside to write these.
One of the fish, Hawthorne, has been inside all winter, which will probably be the case for each such season in the future. But this time around, it was all rather ad hoc, which means we haven't had the time to get a proper tank sorted. Which means regular manual water changes, scooping a few bucketfuls of the stuff out each day (trying not to catch or squash the fish) and replacing it with water of the right temperature.
Goldfish are, apparently, prodigious waste-producers. Their excretions (and any uneaten food that's not been cleaned out promptly) break down to produce ammonia, which is toxic to fish. (Looking it up now, it can burn their gills and make it hard for them to breathe, to the point of being fatal.) In a properly set up tank or pond, a biological filter converts the ammonia to nitrites, and then onwards into nitrates. Aquatic plants can then help manage levels of nitrates (though the occasional water change would still be necessary).
We don't have any hard-working bacteria at the moment, so we have to do it.
What adds to this is that we had to bring another fish inside over the weekend. Chompers has been looking peaky for quite a while. We've had him checked out before, and not found anything conspicuously wrong, but he's clearly been struggling in the cold, as Hawthorne was. We've put off bringing him inside, because it didn't seem sensible to try to support two goldfish in our temporary tank for multiple months. But we've conceded defeat now, before Chompers gets any more sideways.
We had a bit of a false spring here over the weekend, and even though the temperature's dropped again now, the sun is out, and the birds seem suitably confused.
It also reminded me of the small seasons: https://smallseasons.guide/, where we're at 'Ground thaws, fish appear under ice.' Last year was the first where I really felt attuned to the (macro) seasons in anything other than gross weather terms.
I'm looking forward to spring in earnest. Birds are already singing unsociably early. I think we're due for the joyful irritation of 4am wrens soon. Chiffchaffs and swifts slowly filtering in.