So this takes place about 6 years back before i was even into the fish hobby. I look back and knowing what i know now about water paremeters, fish and theyre needs. its even more amazing because some of the events and outcomes seem impossible but i have no reason to lie about this fish ive been thinking about posting this story for aout a week now, was just never bored enough to do it!
Wonder Fish
so like i said, before i was even a fan of the fish keeping hobby i used to live with my mom who had just bought an old house that had a built in koi pond. The old man that sold it to her had a grandson that had just passed away a few years back. When my mom bought the house there were 2 goldfish living in there. the old man had told her that all his koi kept dying but those two fish had lived in there for around 2 years one brown one and one orange one. the fish's names were matthew and micheal (brown one) named after his grandchildren (micheal being the one that commited suicide).
so about 6 months after moving in my mom and her husband decided to fix up the koi pond (at the time the water was brown,murky and just looked disguesting!). the gold fish never had any relevence to us so we were going to get rid of them and fix the pond so its chrystal clear and add koi to it. so we drain the most water we could and found a dead orange goldfish at the bottom. so we through it away looked for the brown one, failed and left him for dead also and called it a day.
well i was out there messin around and saw some movement in that very shallow water. wanted to do the right thing and save its life. so i went and grabbed the pool net and treid to catch that fish. sooner than later i caught it. So i went into the garage and grabbed a little 10 gallon tank that we had lying around in there filled it up with "city hose water", also added a few pine branches in there and put the brown fish in there and stuck it under a bush in the corner of our backyard.
Well as im sure you can guess as with most 16 year old kids. AFTER A FEW DAYS I WAS OVER IT AND FORGOT COMPLETELY ABOUT IT!!! So we get the koi pond going about 4-6 months later. water was clear like crystal and it was beautifully stocked with 4 0r 5 huge 12"+ japanese koi. So one random day im helping my mom do yardwork and she comes across this 10 gal tank under the shrubs full of nasty,dirty,brown water and asked me where it came from, I explained what i did, and she told me to empty it out and put it away. As i empty it, out comes this brown goldfish floppin around on my backyard lawn!!! i was completely amazed at this. a fish with no food,care, no nothing for 6 MONTHS!! not only was I amazed but so was my family after i explained the situation and what a survivor this fish was. in fact they were so impressed that they let it stay in the pond with the koi. And if thats not crazy enough about 2 weeks after adding it to the pond it changes color to a bright orange.
So we started telling everybody that saw our pond we'd point out "thats micheal THE SURVIVOR"!!
So we started telling everybody that saw our pond we'd point out "thats micheal THE SURVIVOR"!!
Well if thats not interesting enough then listen to this....
it came time where we had to re-seal the bottom of the pond which meant that we had to take out all the fish and stick them in a plastic wal-mart pool. we drained the water and had to spread this cement like stuff on the bottom. So we had the deeper end finished and dried and we added water to that part of the pond until the shallow end dreid. so we added the fish to the deep end upon waitin for the shallow to dry and we had all the fish in EXCEPT micheal the goldfish. At the time i was being stupid and picked micheal up with my hands instead of the net (mom was yelling at me not to do so!). I had him in my grip but as soon as i got to the pond....SLIP goes micheal smackin & flopping on the wet cement like stuff. as my mom is freaking out about her fish micheal flopps around until he finds the water. when he was swimming in there he had the cement stuff stuck to his side and gills. we though he would surely die now. so we leave him in there hoping that he might make it. we go out there the next morning and SURE ENOUGH he swimming around happily with not a care in the world it seemed like. so we figured we would change his name from micheal to Wonderfish. and everytime somebody new would come and see the koi pond they would have to hear the story about WONDERFISH!!!
it came time where we had to re-seal the bottom of the pond which meant that we had to take out all the fish and stick them in a plastic wal-mart pool. we drained the water and had to spread this cement like stuff on the bottom. So we had the deeper end finished and dried and we added water to that part of the pond until the shallow end dreid. so we added the fish to the deep end upon waitin for the shallow to dry and we had all the fish in EXCEPT micheal the goldfish. At the time i was being stupid and picked micheal up with my hands instead of the net (mom was yelling at me not to do so!). I had him in my grip but as soon as i got to the pond....SLIP goes micheal smackin & flopping on the wet cement like stuff. as my mom is freaking out about her fish micheal flopps around until he finds the water. when he was swimming in there he had the cement stuff stuck to his side and gills. we though he would surely die now. so we leave him in there hoping that he might make it. we go out there the next morning and SURE ENOUGH he swimming around happily with not a care in the world it seemed like. so we figured we would change his name from micheal to Wonderfish. and everytime somebody new would come and see the koi pond they would have to hear the story about WONDERFISH!!!
it still makes me laugh because i swear everytime our koi would have babys i was told that it was wonderfish knockin everybody up! if i remember right my mom had one of the babies taken inn and the guys from sacramento koi supply told her it was a hybrid of a koi and goldfish. Looking back on that im not sure if thats possible but if not, its still a story ill never forget.
is he still alive?
