Question
Hi Robyn, im not really sure what happened but I may be answering my own question. we had just gone away for the memorial day weekend and before we left we had checked on the fish and everything seemed to be ok, when we came back from vacation we found a bird that had died and ended up in the pond...not sure the exact day because we left Friday and came back tuesday...when returning I immediately took the bird out. when I tried feeding them they we slow to eat...the next day noticed none of the food was eaten and two of the fish were dead...after frantically looking for the others. i see that  the remaing fish were also dead...do you know if the bird would of been the cause of the death.also my mom had found online a wheat barley that was suppose to clean up algea and feed the fish according to the packaging. god for bid I hope this wasn't the cause of the fish getting sick

thanks for your help  

Answer
I'm sorry about your fish.  Are they all dead?  How big is the pond?  What all is in it?  Do you have aeration, filtration, etc.?  What kind of bird was in the pond?  The bird could have drowned or been poisoned.  If drowned, that can happen if it fell in the water and didn't have a ramp out of the pond.  If it was poisoned, then it would likely be in the water, something that could also kill the fish.  Things such as high ammonia and low oxygen that often kill fish wouldn't have killed the bird.  If the pond is small and all the animals are dead, clean it out completely and change all the water.  Someone may have added something toxic to the pond or something could have run into the pond if it rained at all.  A dead bird in the pond would not kill all the fish.  

Barley straw is used to control algae which is what I assume you meant.  That would not kill the fish.  They are not supposed to eat it and wouldn't.  If you truly fed them wheat or barley, that also wouldn't kill the fish.  An exception might be if you bought the kind that's meant to expand in the guts of animals (usually sold to control weeds) which can kill them.  If you had that expanding grain stuff, the bird could also have gotten sick from that.  Can you tell me exactly what it is (refer me to the web site since she got it on-line).

The dead bird and dead fish may not be related at all.  For example, the bird could have drowned, and the fish died of high ammonia.  Before you change the pond water, test it for pH, ammonia, and nitrite to see what those values are.  If one of them is way off, that would explain the fish (but not the bird).  Again, I'm sorry about your fish and hope things go better in the future.

Robyn
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