Comets, Ryukins, Moors…and Crickets

Yesterday we went to Petsmart again and bought some more creatures to add to our menagerie. Somehow or other, a few of our goldfish have been missing and/or found dead. 🙁 One of them was a rather large orange one with black fins. He was the first one we found. Then we noticed a few were missing, including a pure white one. Then Josh found another poor dead one under our filter pump a while back. That was an orange and white one. So that’s three total that we knew of for sure that weren’t in the pond anymore. That would mean that there should have still been 7 goldfish plus one minnow from our original batch. We never did count that many at one time…so we don’t know where some went.

Then our neighbors Rachel and John gave us two of their goldfish. They are beautiful ones with slightly longer and flowy fins and tails. They are orange with a little bit of white on them. I still see them swimming around in our pond, so they’re doing good! That means we should have had, what, 9 goldfish plus one minnow? Somehow the numbers never seem to add up correctly there in the pond.

But anyway, yesterday when we went to Petsmart we bought (and therefore RESCUED) three more comet goldfish (one pure silver, one pure white, and one white with a red splotch on the tail), and three more rosy red minnows, one of whom looks almost black! So those 6 were rescued from a fate of being live food for some other creatures. Then Josh said that we should someday get some of the specialty goldfish; I thought that was a great idea, so we decided to get them that same day and just introduce them all to the pond at the same time. So we picked out two gorgeous Ryukin goldfish (real chubby almost triangular bodies and looooong flowy fins and tails), and two Black Moor goldfish who have telescopic eyes so they look like little hammerhead sharks; and they look like black velvet with a little bit of gold shimmer on their sides and bellies.

So in total we bought 10 new fish. I sort of give up on even knowing how many fish total now we should have in our pond, but ball-park estimate would be at 20 fish – 4 minnows and 16 goldfish. It’s impossible to see them all at once, because half are usually hiding and they all swim around so fast, but it’s great to see so many happy fish in our pond.

Then we decided to rescue some of the crickets they have for sale as live food in Petsmart. We only bought three, and I’m regretting that. I think we’ll go back soon and buy a bunch more and let them free in our yard too. We love the sound of crickets at night!