Babies have spawned

[mouseams]

We bought a house late last year. There is a big rock formation which the former owner ran a pump to a spill bucket which the water falls down the rock, very nice it feeds to a middle pond and a downhill man-made little stream into the main pond. I believe the main pond to be about 2000 or so gallons, it has two humps which he covered with the liner and it is above ground on one side with a retaining wall.

He let his dogs frolic in it and when he moved we let it become "natural", or as natural as a lined man-made pond can be. Early this spring we had water skimmers move in and toads mated here. We had oodles of tadpoles, but I have not seen hide nor hair in the last two-weeks. We have had two different kinds of frogs reside here as well. Our water became very green, as there were no plants and the pond is in the full sun most of the day.

I started adding plants and then we decided, OK- let's get some fish. we bought 9 red comets and 3 shubunkins. We added 15 trapdoors. Two weeks ago we adopted 8 common goldfish which were much larger than our 3-5 inch fish. The new fish are beautiful. Temps here have been cool and we have had cloudy weather for three weeks . They have just started feeding in the morning and in the evening.

The other night they started getting active and as it got darker I noticed we had babies. I also had added arrowhead plants and a pot of submerged plants. The babies are of different stages. some are just over one quarter inch. I do not want to scoop these babies out into a holding tank. If they made it to this size is it possible that a few will survive? It looks like I may have two different species. I either had hitch-hikers on a plant or have propagating fish.

How much can I expect them to grow this summer? Do I need to feed the babies and if so what?

Thanks for reading my boring tail rofile:

 

[Robyn]

Not boring at all!

Goldie babies are not very gold... so they may very well be fry. Everything I have read and heard says that you should let nature take it's course. If they are recognized as fish... the bigger ones may very well leave them alone. They can hide in the plants from the frogs. And... you are likely to end up with too many... not too few. Goldies are the bunny rabbits of the pond fish world it seems! LOL

 

[mouseams]

Thanks Robyn! I won't mind too many surviving as we have a good size pond and it seems that we may have a pond-snatcher heron in the neighborhood. One of the goldfish that was here this morning is either pulling a Houdini or he got eaten rofile: I had 19 fish and at best can count 11 or 12. The white goldfish and the "creamsicle" goldie are still here though. I really don't want to net the pond, but really need to add some more rushes/reeds to the pond. I have beautiful variegated iris in the front of the house which need dividing desperately so I will also add some of those to the pond in the fall.