My goldfish pond

[CometKeith]

Well it's been freezing here the last few days. it barely has hit 50 degrees. My frog dissapeared mid-week and I'm afraid he went on another adventure like last year. I hope he comes back again. The other one never did and got stuck in a window well. He has been croaking a lot so may be he found a mate somewhere. The tadpole eggs i got a few weeks ago have mostly hatched. i have them outside in a 15 gallon aquarium. So far there are lot of wigglers. i hope some of them will make it eventually to frogs. Of the two floating plants I put in two weeks ago the water hycinth is doing a little better than the water lettuce and has almost a full grown second one. I'm going to make it a race and see which one multiplies faster! We have had a decent amount of cold weather so i'm sure that's not helping. Oh and one of my baby black comets from last year is turning orange around it's head. yey!

 

[tbendl]

CometKeith, can you tell me your set up? I am considering goldfish, I only want a few and I don't want to net my pond. What do you have and am I way off in thinking I can only do a few and not net?

 

[CometKeith]

Hey Tbendl. I have about 700 gallons with one waterfall. I have two Laguna pumps. One is a 600 maxflow and the other around 960 max flow. They are both very energy efficient. The bigger pump goes into a Laguna Pressurized filter. Both flow to my man made waterfall. The only other thing I have is a small air pump with a large round ball. I keep that going year round. In the winter I remove the bigger pump and biofilter and let the smaller pump run over the waterfall. I need to clean the bioflter by using the scrubbers once or twice a month. i don't set the pumps too close to the bottom so they don't pick up a lot of gunk. Once my pond is set up I don't add more fish, snails, or anything else and let nature take it's course. Also I don't overfeed and try not to feed much until the pond is close to being cycled. I have had about 30 baby fish in the last three years and the number of fish I have has quadrupled. Here are a few pictures I took the other day.Good luck with goldfish if you decide on them. I don't net but we don't have a lot of hurons here only peregrine falcons but they don't bother my fish.

 

[callingcolleen1]

Looks very lovely and colorful collection of fish Keith. Your water iris is getting bigger and your lily pads are much further ahead than mine. I only have about five pads right now.

 

[tbendl]

It looks lovely. I'm hoping my bog will be sufficient since that is the only filter I have. I can run some batting into an upflow pot I have to catch fines if and when it's needed. Thank you so much for taking the time to post pictures and respond. What all do you have in the picture? It looks like a fantail in the second picture on the left?

 

[sissy]

I love the long tail fish and my long tails all came from breeding since I only ever bought one long tail .

 

[CometKeith]

Sissy,I wish more of mine had long tails but it's interesting that a few that I gave up on as having short tails are suddenly growing longer tails! TBendl the red and white fish is a sarasa comet. I bought it from Petsmart 6 years ago and was one of my very first fish. It has really grown since then. It is the dominant male of my pond and is always the first to start chasing any female and last to give up! I saw in the other thread someone suggested buying feeder fish. The ones under 50 cents people buy to feed to their lizards, chiclids, etc but I would not recommend that. Feeder fish because the way they are kept have way too many diseases and will just cause trouble for you. Colleen. Yeah it's wierd that my lilies are doing so well. Several pots fell to the bottom a few years ago and I just leave them there. I'm sure the bulbs they grow from have probably split the pots by now but I don't touch them at all because I figure it ain't broke don't fix it!

 

[rodsboys]

Sissy,I wish more of mine had long tails but it's interesting that a few that I gave up on as having short tails are suddenly growing longer tails! TBendl the red and white fish is a sarasa comet. I bought it from Petsmart 6 years ago and was one of my very first fish. It has really grown since then. It is the dominant male of my pond and is always the first to start chasing any female and last to give up! I saw in the other thread someone suggested buying feeder fish. The ones under 50 cents people buy to feed to their lizards, chiclids, etc but I would not recommend that. Feeder fish because the way they are kept have way too many diseases and will just cause trouble for you. Colleen. Yeah it's wierd that my lilies are doing so well. Several pots fell to the bottom a few years ago and I just leave them there. I'm sure the bulbs they grow from have probably split the pots by now but I don't touch them at all because I figure it ain't broke don't fix it!

Agreed on the feeders, but a decent quarantine procedure can land you some really nice fish for cheap.

 

[CometKeith]

I agree rodsboys. Unfortunately I don't have a quarantine tank and I haven't added fish in a long time but naturally I still think about it. The last time I bought feeders almost all my fish died within a few months so I just don't do it anymore. A quarantine tank makes sense for almost any new addition. Just curious how large is your quaratine tank and is it filtered?

 

[CometKeith]

Tribute....Probably I am one of the few to look up notable members but i noticed I am going into a tie with this post with notable member John Huff and the number of posts he had. He hasn't posted since last year and I wish him well. With social media and blog posts in a way we are all faceless and we don't to really get to know other members on a forum like this. I don't really know if John was 101 years old and using a computer from his study but I have no reason not to believe that. Heres to you Dr. Sir John Huff!

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[rodsboys]

I agree rodsboys. Unfortunately I don't have a quarantine tank and I haven't added fish in a long time but naturally I still think about it. The last time I bought feeders almost all my fish died within a few months so I just don't do it anymore. A quarantine tank makes sense for almost any new addition. Just curious how large is your quaratine tank and is it filtered?

I have a couple of (20+ gallon) Rubbermaid containers I use as needed and a 150 gallon trough just in case. For filtration I have a few very large air driven sponge filters I keep "alive" just in case on other enclosures as well as multiple spare heaters as heat will often force any disease and parasites to rear their ugly heads quicker.
I usually quarantine for 4-6 weeks with a two week salt treatment contained in the middle of it.

 

[CometKeith]

Rodboys, Great info on quarantine. I don't have a qt setup and that is one of the reasons I don't add new fish to my pond. Update on my pond: I have been losing about an inch of water every day or so lately. The two possible causes are I rebuilt my waterfall lately and it might be leaking water or ....when I rebuilt it a large piece of limestone fell into the pond that I had to retrieve and it might have cut the liner. I hope that's not the problem!!

 

[addy1]

Good luck

 

[CometKeith]

Thanks.I rebuilt the waterfall today so if it loses water I'll know where the leak is!

 

[CometKeith]

So far the fix of the waterfall seems okay but we have had so much rain lately it's hard to know. I took a bunch of pics the other day. The babies from last year are getting bigger. One of the babies just started turning fom black to orange. Most of my fish were born in the pond three years ago when the number of fish almost tripled in one season. I hope more of the black ones start changing colors soon!