rehoming goldfish, how have you gone about it?

[Criscar]

Good afternoon! In this first year I am still getting a feel for how friendly vs unfriendly my pond is for fish fry. First round of goldfish spawning there was only one survivor, who I see around the pond on occasion. For the second, I only ever saw one little 1/2" shubunkin guy one time but never again so not sure if that one made it, but either way, one or two _maybe_ survivors a year is fine with me. Other types of fish in the pond are both small species so not much concern about their numbers at this point.

The bigger immediate problems are the fry from the goldfish eggs I accidentally introduced into one of my indoor aquariums on a plant, got 9 survivors in that bunch, and definitely can't keep them all. 6 of the bunch are going to either be common or comet goldfish, but too little to tell yet who might end up with long fins (or at least the last time I had fish this young you definitely couldn't have predicted which one would have been the comet and which one the common). If I release them in my pond now at 3/4"-1" size and hang on to them until they are closer to 2-2.5 inches, am I going to have a hard time rehoming them at that point at a LFS or elsewhere, or would them being larger make them more desirable to people/pet stores? I'd rather not just drop off these babies for the Petco/Petsmart feeder tank if possible, but I know the odds of them all ending up in appropriate homes are probably pretty low unless I personally interrogate every person who might want one. How have you all gone about finding new homes when needed? I haven't yet figured out if there is any sort of pond association in the San Diego area unless someone here knows of one? Thanks!

 

[JRS]

Check with your local stores for a steady outlet. I was always happy to get local healthy goldfish locally especially if not just orange. The alternative we had was culling the feeders for the best and selling those individually.

At the 2-3 inch size you might be ok since wholesalers have to charge a lot more for the bigger ones due to shipping but again color and form can be a factor. Much harder getting a return on investment for large goldfish as a store especially if common colored.

Healthy local goldfish in summer are especially good since the feeders, hundreds to the bag, ship poorly in warm weather and people are ponding.

 

[mrsclem]

I have always used Craigslist and the classified section of the local paper. I did have issues with people who wanted to buy koi who didn't have a pond. Most pond owners have pics on their phones!