Does anyone know anything about discus? (It's a tropical fish.)

[Pulsegleaner]

I leave my Koi outside, but my pond is deep enough and large enough for that.
I couldn't imagine bringing in 10 1.5ft Koi and goldfish into the house! =0

I'm not sure that it has to be all that deep. Our neighbors had a free standing pond (looked a little like the bottom half of a stone sarcophagus* that they kept some goldfish in. Winter came and the pond froze over (actually given how small it was, it froze all the way through) Then early that spring right after the flaw me and the neighbors kid were sitting on the edge and he dropped part of his sandwich in the water. Suddenly up came some small orange forms. The fish had hidden in the mud at the bottom!

* Funny story about the pool. They actually found it while doing some renovations on the side of the house. One of the previous owners had actually buried the thing completely (it was 4-5 feet underground; WAAY to far to be due to natural dirt accumulation.

Most of the houses around here have/had fishponds. Technically, WE have a pretty large one in our shade garden. It just has never worked (the copper piping that brought in the water dissolved decades ago) so it's fill with dirt as a planter.

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

it depends on the area you live in and if the bottom of the pond has enough room for mud. in my area we need a pond to be at least 4' deep to go far enough below the freeze line and keep the trapped gasses from being a problem. or you need to keep a hole thawed in the ice to let those gasses escape. the problem with keeping the hole is local fauna take advantage of it and steal the fish they can grab if they can't get deep enough.

 

[Nyboy]

I have a floating heater used to keep livestock tanks unfrozen. It was under $40 at tractor supply store.

 

[Nyboy]

Pulseglener 5 feet unground, are you sure it's not a some type of coffin ?

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

it does sound like a vault for a coffin. maybe it could have been a cistern?

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Well, as I said it sure as hell LOOKED like the bottom of a sarcophagus (though for extra creepypasta, at that size it would have to be a sarcophagus for a child) The real problem with a cistern is quite simply the age of the house. It's no older than ours. In fact, I think it's a few years newer. So were talking about the 1930's by which point pretty much ANY house around here would be built with running water, so no need to put a cistern in. Plus given how big the house is, that would be an awfully small cistern It holds maybe 1 hogshead of water, tops. Fine for one person, but the house has always had more people than that. In fact when it was built it probably had a LOT more people since that house (and ours) had servants quarters. So unless whatever it is pre dates the house by quite a lot it's probably not a vault.

That actually wasn't the only thing they found. On the other side of the house, they found a old milk bottle. NYboy, you'll love this (it's from Samuel Hustis's White Plains Dairy (the neighbors gave me the bottle when they moved, so I'm looking at it now)

Our property has had some odd buried things too. A few years ago while trying to find a leak in the outside water pipes, we discovered that one of the little metal plugs poking out of the ground on the side of the house is actually the access plug for a large heating oil tank (and it still has oil in it) from back when the house ran on oil (we're gas now) The assessor basically said to leave it alone since if it leaks it will cost a LOT to clean up. And until it mysteriously disappeared during a boiler repair job, the crawlspace of the boiler room had perched on the fill rubble, a 1920s style mousetrap (one of those ones that looks a bit like a sideways birdcage). Technically I imagine the flip top underground garbage can is also buried or more accurately anything in there is , since we can't get down to pull it up Someday in the future someone is going to find a 1980's empty Sips! Iced tea juice box from there and make a fortune on the antique market. That and a huge pile of Norwegian Pine Borer carcasses, or not (I never see any down there so maybe they all just crawled back up after I tossed them in there.)