Help! New koi and pond owner here. We dug a 30x50 ft by 10 ft deep mud pond with a smaller 15x15x5 section to the side 2 years ago. Let it sit and settle last year, this year we added 5 goldfish and 3 weeks later we added 16 koi, small and medium small and a few larger comets over the course of a week.
2 days later i added my airstone. the water has become very murky, probably from the fish rooting in the mud, but the sad part is, i haven't seen no hide nor hair of any of them! When i had the goldfish in there they would swim all over the pond and i would spot them in the mostly clear water in various places. Once i added the 10 koi and then the other 6 its gotten muddier and muddier and now i don't see them at all. Not in the shallower area that i could probably see them through the cloudiness or closer to the banks but nothing.
I've been throwing in floating food and NOTHING comes up. i've thrown goldfish flakes and nothing comes up. I tossed in a piece of bread 2 days ago and its still there. for the last week, i have turned the airstone off, and then thrown food, waited 10 minutes and then turned the airstone on hoping they would learn to associate the airstone off with feeding time.
Are all my fish dead? We don't have predator birds, we have cats but the banks are steep and they don't go to the water. there hasn't been any sign of dead, floating fish. The water cant be too cold, its the middle of summer, or too hot as its pretty deep.
Does my pond just have so many bugs and shrimp that they don't need to eat the pellets? I do see a very large abundance of water beetles and water skimmers every time I'm down there.
Why wouldn't they come up to eat? its a good brand of food, the pellets are small, as my fish ranch from 1 inch to 5 inches.
i feel like im just going through the motions at this point as my pond seems completely empty.