Safely Bringing Fish Home from a Long Distance

Reader Contribution by Faithful Homesteader
Published on July 18, 2019
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For some time our pond has been filled with two 14-inch comet goldfish and a bunch of flathead minnows. My husband noticed one day that one of the comets was dead. It was just floating in the pond. My husband had talked about getting rid of the pond for a while because of the upkeep with the filters, but I mentioned that it could throw off our little ecosystem. The frogs like the pond and they eat mosquitoes and other bugs in the garden. I like our fish and pond lilies. It is hard to imagine not having the pond after all these years. 

I was concerned about the comet being lonely so we decided to get it some friends. We found a place in the city selling butterfly koi. It was a bit of a drive for us so we needed to rig a set up that would keep the fish alive for the journey. My husband set up a bucket with a trash bag liner to fill with water, but we also needed a way to pump air into the bucket to replenish oxygen.

My husband ended up hooking up a power converter in my truck so that we could run an AC appliance off of DC power. He had an old aquarium air pump we could use. He had rigged some special jumper cables he made for use in his truck. They were used to connect from my truck battery to the inside of the truck. They were connected to the power converter. The air pump was plugged into the converter and the air line was taped to the bag to provide air for the fish. 

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