Hi everyone.

It has been a tough week and this has reflected on everything I’ve been doing.

Work is slow, which makes the day drag, I love my customers, love seeing them to chat even for a brief moment while they buy their lunch, but it’s a drag for them, and it’s the same for me. They’re all suffering with January blues and it makes me feel even worse too. 😦

Anyway, last night I went to a gent’s house to do a pond visit. He put a message up on the forum I help mod and seeing as he bought pond equipment off me last year, and lived local, I offered to take a look at his fish.

Paul took me up there, Liverpool isn’t too far away, but I don’t like new places in the dark. lol, we had dinner in a local pub which was really nice and then went to visit the pond.

Catching fish in the dark, wasn’t so easy for him, but we caught two.

When you first look into a strange pond. There are several tell tail signs which your looking for.

How the fish are reacting to you being there?

How are they swimming?

and when caught how docile are they?

what the mucus scrape looks like when you first take it?

to be fair his fish were quite responsive, they were for the most part swimming about okay, one or two were a little lopsided though so that was the first indicator.

The second to me was the mucus sample we took. It was grey and thick.

A healthy fish has an almost clear sample. This wasn’t.

So, really I knew I was looking for something under the scope, I just wasn’t so sure what I’d find.

The first sample was from a sanke, it had pinked shiro (white skin) and stress veins showing. Under the scope, it also had flukes…

First one done. Looking over the slide, probably around 20 flukes.

Second scrape came from a Magoi, much bigger than the first, and although it should have been a rich black, was greying with over producing mucus.

Again this had flukes on, (skin flukes I believe)

But I also found a few Chilodonella as well.

I carried on looking for about 30 mins, checking both slide again to make sure I wasn’t missing anything smaller, like Costia, but even though I thought I saw the odd, tiny movement, I couldn’t spot anything else.

Job done. And I left, at least knowing he could treat the pond correctly and his fish would soon be much happier. 🙂

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On the writing side of things this week.

I’ve read a lot, and I’ve edited a lot of the first three chapters of TSK – The beginning. I’ve also had some very good crits back from the nano website and from the OWWSFF which is a crit site specifically for sci fi, fanstasy and horror writers.

I finally think the first three chapters are getting there. Only another 26 to go… lol.

Looking forward to the weekend.

How are you all doing? Busy, slow, what’s your first full week back at work etc like?

Take care and speak soon.

Dawn