Pond fish

[Jack]

I would appreciate any do's or don'ts on adding fish to my pond. There are currently a few frogs in the pond and that's it. I have never had any fish in this pond. My fear is I will spend lots of $$$$ only to have the fish die because of something I didn't do right or did wrong. My pond has a bio/mech filter, waterfall, and has about 6-8 hours of afternoon sun, and is shaded in the morning.

Thanks!

 

[BBK]

What are the dimensions of the pond? Length, width, depth.

 

[Jack]

BBK:

The pond is 7' wide x 13' long x 30" deep

 

[BBK]

You can have koi then.

 

[Jack]

You can have koi then.

Thanks BBK, do you buy locally or over the internet when purchasing koi?

 

[BBK]

I don't have any. You will have to ask the koi experts on here.

 

[DrCase]

I have had better luck with the internet koi

 

[koikeepr]

Unless you have a decent pond/koi shop locally, you kind of have to buy online. And good breeders/sellers do a wonderful job of shipping--tho you will find that the shipping can be just as (or more) expensive than the fish itself.

If you don't have the wallet for that, then you can check with your local pet shop/Petsmart type place, but the koi are pretty pedestrian and very vanilla. You can start with cheapy koi that way, but I will warn you that if you are successful with those, you get quickly addicted and will move on to pricier fish.

You could also do many varieties of interested goldfish too, and many of them look koi-like. For example Sarassa's are very hardy and pretty and can get to be 12" long when mature. I have a few of them in a smaller pond and people mistake them for tanchos and kohaku koi all the time.

Wakin goldfish are also beautiful and colorful; and I'm about to receive a shipment of half a dozen Watonai for one of my ponds on Friday that are being shipped from Hawaii. You can get good quality fish for about $15-20 bucks each.

Much easier to get good quality goldfish more inexpensively than koi. And you can mix the hardy/fast moving goldfish with koi easily.

 

[Chef Dave]

I have koi, goldfish, and mosquito fish in my pond.

Golden Orfe are also suitable for ponds. These yellow-orange fish grow to 1 1/2 feet in length and tend to dart around the water in schools. They're not as popular as koi or goldfish because they're more sensitive to water conditions. If you decide to get these fish, you'll have to closely monitor the quality of water. Since these fish swim in schools, you should have no less then 3 otherwise they get stressed out and die.

I thought about putting some game fish in my pond like tilapia or bluegill but these fish would destroy my pond vegetation. The tilapia in particular don't have a good reputation as community fish ... so I'm going to put these fish in an aquafarm container system to raise and harvest as food.