I had wondered whether, with the advent of another year, I should start a new series for the Saturday post on this blog. But so much happens in the various ponds and tanks that I have, that I will continue with the same subject, as I do with the gardens on Wednesdays, though whether there will be enough happening throughout the year remains to be seen. And I will have shorter posts this year, and focus more on the pictures, since that I suspect is what people are interested in.

Though there was also bad news towards the end of the year, I will start with the good. A couple of days before Christmas Kavi and his uncle Dharshana presented me with a host of exotic fish, for the two new tanks. It may be remembered that last year Dharshana gave me two large ones to put in with Kavi’s massive pink gourami, whose doctor had told him, having cured him of what had seemed a life-threatening illness, that he was bad tempered because he was by himself, and would improve with company.

We were frightened he would gobble up any company he was given, but the large fish Dharshan gave me were beyond him, and he and that pair co-exist very happily. Only once have I seen him chase them, when I think he felt his food was being taken, but most days they all three gobble away, with no thought for each other. 

This year too Dharshana gave me two large black fish, Silver Dollars, he said they were, not quite as large as the previous two. This was appropriate for I put them in the tank on the balcony where I had two white gourami who had grown since I got them, which is why Kavi thought they should be moved from the bath tub where I had first put them. He believes they are the same breed as his massive one, but they are still comparatively small so that Dharshana’s new black fish are to them as his earlier ones are to the giant.

They live quite happily it would seem with the gourami and also the four catfish there, two white ones and two black ones. The white ones I bought for this tank but the black ones had previously been in the bath tub under the ehala tree, and I had not seen them since I put them in. Kavi said he saw one occasionally, but of the other he had just a vague glimpse once, as I had once of the braver one.

I had had two white gourami in that tank but one vanished and then the other died, after I had covered the tank up, and Kithsiri suggested then that we remove the mud and keep it bare. When this was done, while I was away, Kavi found both black catfish and we moved them to the dining room tank (as I will refer to it, using balcony tank for those on the upper balcony).

The two black catfish promptly vanished, but one did see glimpses of them occasionally, and then after the two big black fish were put there they have appeared more frequently, perhaps thinking that they needed to be quick off the mark to get anything to eat.

The first picture shows the tank with the balcony beyond it, encompassing a bougainvillea bush and also a little bed for greenery. This scene has however appeared previously too, when I introduced this tank. The second picture shows the big gourami in the pink tub in the garden, with the fish Dharshana gave me for Christmas in 2022, and there follow the Silver Dollars he gave me a year later, in the new tank with one of the gourami lurking in the background. The next picture shows the gourami with one of the white catfish, but this picture like the last one is not clear because the water is muddy.

This is because I had wanted to have lotuses here, and the fifth picture shows a plant with a blossom I had put in the week before Christmas, with a gourami sailing by. After that blossom faded away another was beginning to emerge through the water, but then it vanished, and when I checked on what had happened, which required getting the basin out because of the murkiness, the whole plant had vanished.

I fear gourami eat lotus leaves, and one of these two is voracious. But I suppose the realization that I cannot have plants there will help me to see the fish, because I will now clear away the mud.