Washing machine mayhem!

This is a classic!
A guy comes into the shop yesterday he's been coming to me for years…. in fact its amazing what your customers get up to if I don’t keep a beady eye on them…. As you all know I’m a stickler for the basics i.e. water testing and water conditioning and husbandry especially when it comes to biological filtration. Well this chap for me takes the biscuit I sat behind the counter with me mouth a gap as he ticked all the boxes for me.
As usual I asked him about his pond and his koi and he said everything was fine and then like an idiot I probed some more and then he let the clangers come in quick fire I was shocked…he has over 20 koi up to 2 foot and he tells me every night he turns off his biological filters before he goes to bed and then in the morning he switches them back on…I could not believe what I was hearing…for one after an hour your bacteria which are highly oxygen dependent would smother and die and the soup of death then gets flushed into the pond in the morning I was dazed and so I painfully went about the abc‘s of filtration concerning the direct relationship between biological function and the availability of nitrogenous waste and the high demands on oxygen he shook his head a few times and I think I won him over and then I said ‘how did I not catch you at this in the first place?’
I got stuck into him and it began to turn funny…. after him saying ‘but me fish are all healthy I never lose one’ and then comes the clanger …except for the time…. He tells me every Christmas he would put the remains of the Christmas turkey on the roof of his granny flat. This according to him was the way he could share chrimbo with nature i.e. by giving a little bit back as if to say…. I smiled cause I really like loonies I find them irresistibly interesting. Well anyway he said one Christmas a bird dropped a bit of turkey into his pond and choked his biggest koi and it croaked it. From then on he stopped that practice he even said to me he was so pissed off that he was in tears but the birds they were the biggest losers no more Christmas dinners. I nodded my head as if to give him some support…. ‘Yeah man I feel your pain those stupid dam birds.’
Well anyway where was I. Oh yeah I was enjoying myself this man was a little gem. I found out that he spent a lot of time in the granny flat thanks to his missus again I grinned. Anyway the best bit is next to come. Now to fish keepers cleaning filters is a sacred thing. We use aquarium or pond water to lessen the blow to our bacteria but this guy has it sussed why did I not think of this sooner. He has a biotec 36, which has about 18 big sponges. He tells me about once every couple of months he gives the wife a few quid to go out and buy herself something nice. He wont let her drive no he gets her a taxi and tells her he will pick her up later. As soon as she is gone he removes the big sponges from his filters and stuffs them into her washing machine. I bet you are smiling…. go on I bet you areJ
He then tells me the sponges come out spotless and then he said cleaning them the other way is back breaking stuff. My policy is and this is the truth I do not make people keep fish the way I keep them but I try to pool ideas and help where I can…. but this guy had me by the gonads…I was speechless but I wanted him to continue I could listen to this all day…So he tells me he spends all day using the washing machine and keeping his wife at bay telling her he was running a bit late and he would collect her as soon as he could. After he was finished he would put the machine on to rinse it. And then he would wash some old clothes to be sure to be sure. He said he was upstairs looking out the window when he heard his wife scream from downstairs. He said he went into a cold sweat when she fffed and blinded about the brown stains on her best white blouse but he told me he got away with it.
I told him he was mad and I reminded him about the biological impact on his pond…he looked at me and I looked at him as you do. Then he smiled. He told me he would buy a washing machine for his wife a brand new one and he would put the other one outside for washing his filters…but he would use pond water to run the machine…. apparently he is very handy around the house he spent an hour afterwards telling me how he plumbed his power shower…put down the wooden floors…. installed doors, light, fittings, decking…I died that day…. he killed me…. my will to live left and I withered like a flower exposed to a terminal desert sun…. but he was brilliant. I think he was so brilliant he could have been a genius but in the end he broke his quartz tube from his clarifier and only I can fix that …..Touché!

J

iaN

Whahahahahah i'm in tears, and half my beer is over my laptop from snorting and spluttering I laughed so much!!

Ah that was brilliant, I can only imagine the washing machine, and you trying to keep a straight face

Now that is a classic. Washing machine what a legend how are those fish alive

So long as you use Biological Washing Powder with Biological Filters, it'll be OK.

To add to this, a lady near me had a goldfish. I happened to drop in a conversation that she needs to keep the water clean (and she obviously ignored my advice on 'how' to keep the water clean).

the next week I got a call saying her goldfish looked dead.....so I popped over and saw a dead fish surrounded by the best foam you could imagine.
= non-biological Fairy Liquid.

Common newbie mistake

Now that is class!!

1/ get the wife out of the house.

2/pop the filters in the washing machine.

3/then to cover up stick in some old clothes.

This guy is a genius, we should get him on here to give us some tips.

Stuart.

Was in a church today at a christening while reading this and i actually LAUGHED OUT LOUD in the church when all was quite haha

thanks for that everyone looking at me

thanks mate very funny

Sean

BlueRam wrote:

Was in a church today at a christening while reading this and i actually LAUGHED OUT LOUD in the church when all was quite haha

thanks for that everyone looking at me

thanks mate very funny

Sean

Just be thankful it wasn't a funeral you were at

lolol

yea it was funnier for me i had to listen to him for two hours and people wonder why i act weird sometimes...but he was a legend he told the story much better than i.......anyways i will post up stuff as it happens but i dont want to bore anyone.....

Ian

Crazy thing is, the fish survive all those crazy things...maybe we dont give fish enough credit sometimes!! Some gangster though!!!

Gavin