Small Fish in the Big Pond

[Neo]

Apparently My goldfish or koi spawned over the summer and We didn't notice, when some hyacinths were moved to a little tub garden we must have transplanted eggs. My wife just noticed them a little over a month ago and they are only between 1 and 2 inches long. Only one has color so far.

My question is "When is it safe to add them into a pond with koi around 2 feet long"?

If I can't mix them soon I'm going to have to buy a tank and house them for the winter since the tub is shallow and above ground. I know the koi could easily swallow them right now but wasn't sure if they would spit them back out.

 

[Craig58]

Koi and goldfish wont eat the babies once they are free swimming. You can add them back anytime.

That's not to say some might not disappear. Bullfrogs, dragonfly nymphs, snakes, and other pond creatures might get some of them.

Craig

 

[capewind]

Ive seen a couple of ours go for 1" babies, but we also have two goldfish that made it into the koi pond around 3" and "Pumpkin and Shadow" are doing just fine now, dispite hubbies wishes LOL.

 

[Fishylove]

Did I read something somewhere that adult koi will not eat koi or goldfish babies? But that adult goldfish will eat koi babies? Or am I just thinking I read that? :huh:

 

[j.w]

I think I read that here also Wendy

 

[Fishylove]

Oh good! thought I was loosing it lol

 

[Neo]

Hmm...I have a 10 gallon aquarium already, maybe I should bring them in just to be safe. I just didn't want 3 aquariums to take care of if I didn't have to.

 

[addy1]

Hmm...I have a 10 gallon aquarium already, maybe I should bring them in just to be safe. I just didn't want 3 aquariums to take care of if I didn't have to.

I would just put them in the pond, survival of the fittest, down the road you will be fish overrun if all the spawns survive. But if you want to make sure they survive bring them inside is the answer.

 

[capewind]

How big is your pond? How many babies are we talking about? and What are your goals/limits for population?

This is the first year we've collected babies. With the old ponds, they were just too small for the babies to have a chance and would get gobbled up well before we could find/catch them. NOW we have plenty of room, but the goldfish especially multiply like rabbits LOL.

I am personally having a blast watching our babies grow inside. Our youngest group came as a surprise ... what I had been doing is keeping them in a plastic kiddie pool in the kitchen, and as they got big enough to not worry about filtration getting them, moved them to our inside QT pond since it wasnt needed otherwise. Well, several of the new babies we found young (aka within a day or two of becoming free swimming, just out of the "suction cup stage"....) so have them in a 30 gallon tank. I've lost track, but think over the last 2-3 weeks we ended up with 26 more. Now they are about 1/3" for the 6 super tiny guys, and the two monsters are about 3/4". I'm sure all but two are either comets or shubunkins... I still have two that are too small for me to tell what they are (one is looking koi but just not sure of that)... If they are all non koi, I should be able to get away with another month in the fish tank before they are getting crowded in there.

What I am getting to here is depending on what species you caught, and how many, a 10 gallon tank isnt going to work for long. Our largest, of the older comets (our comets are growing faster than our koi babies) were caught maybe the beginning of, to mid May and are coming up on 3 1/2 - 4" now... sitting here looking at the 30 gallon tank, I cant imagine more then 5-6 of them in our tank without having to really up the filtration (using a fish tank filter, sized for this tank).

If you have a bunch of babies, there are a lot of options, to get more room than a 10 gallon tank, without spending much at all. Like I said, for what is now our mid sized babies, we are using a plastic kiddie pool. It's 60" so totally full, would hold 100 gallons of water... ours is sitting with about 60 gallons in it... depending on the numbers, you can use a tote, or even a trash barrel.

OR you can toss them/some back into the pond, like others said, they go with the survival of the fittest. It depends what your goals are. I wanted to watch the baby koi grow, want a few more shubunkins, and will place most of the comet babies... lot easier to catch them at this size, as the goldfish especially are fast and our ponds have plenty of places for them to hide.

 

[sissy]

I found babies in my pond too and my koi are over 2 ft. long also and the babies are swimming with the big fish with no problems .

 

[Neo]

How big is your pond? How many babies are we talking about? and What are your goals/limits for population?

We have only seen 4 babies but unfortunately our pond is small, around 600 gallons with 2 koi around 18 inches, 3 koi around 8 inches, and a few goldfish. I plan on making it much bigger in spring or overwintering them inside and digging it now while the weather is nice and dry.

I took them in last year with no problems, although this year I would definitely have to use two tanks inside since they all managed to hit a nice growth spurt over the Summer. This was going to be the first year I planned to leave them out in the winter but when they grew so fast I worry about the water quality.

We never planned on having that many fish in that size pond but ended up taking some in unexpected. If only I would have found this site a year earlier I would have been much better prepared for that and planned ahead.

We don't need the extra 4 fish but I think it's become somewhat of a project for my Wife so I'm trying to keep them because She was not nearly as happy with a pond (My Idea) and is finally showing some real interest.

 

[sissy]

hey you have to love the relaxation from a pond and the neat sound of water and those big fishy mouths begging .Remember don't go to overboard or you may scare her a little :razz: freak her out bad if you spend an excessive amount of money on a hole in the ground :razz: .I kept it cheap and liner was the most expensive thing I bought ,rocks i collected so they were free .

 

[Neo]

hey you have to love the relaxation from a pond and the neat sound of water and those big fishy mouths begging .Remember don't go to overboard or you may scare her a little :razz: freak her out bad if you spend an excessive amount of money on a hole in the ground :razz: .I kept it cheap and liner was the most expensive thing I bought ,rocks i collected so they were free .

Oh She loves the relaxing by the sounds of the waterfalls part, just not so big on my frequent Ideas and the time we spend adding more and fixing things. Not really money either, I've done decent so far on keeping costs down, gathered the rock here and there along the way.

It's that look I get when I start to get the itch to do more since a pond is never finished and I really don't think she realized that at the time. I think she thought it would be dig a hole, add fish, enjoy...

I'll probably bring them in to keep her happy though, just to be safe.

 

[capewind]

If you only have 4, I say go for it to entertain the wife

I tossed about 50 comet babies back outside at one point, and when I changed my mind and brought them back in (a week or so later), there were only 15 left (which was fine by me). They went to the smaller pond (2000+ gallons) and I can not say for sure if it were comets/shubunkins that got them, or maybe a frog (although we'd evict them as soon as we found them)... we also still had/have dragonfly nympths out there, but I doubt they got 2-3" fish. Trying to catch babies in the big pond, I watched a couple of our koi take down 1-2" babies. It wasnt ALL of the fish, it was a couple of specific fish that went for them, and they had 6400-6500 gallons of water to hide in,

If the babies can hide til they are big enough that the big fish know they are fish, they have a fighting chance, but IMO, before they are a solid 2-3" it is a gamble.

It is neat to watch the little guys swim with the big guys. Even tho hubby built a dam between the two ponds, we had at least two comets for sure jump out of the "comet pond" and back into the "koi pond" from when I had dumped babies back into the smaller pond. Pumpkin (solid orange comet) and Shadow (near black comet) are somewhere about 3.5" maybe getting close to 4" and are a thorn in hubbies side;-) He wanted all the koi in one pond, and all the shubunkins and comets in the other pond LOL.

 

[crsublette]

I'd pay more attention to the fry rather than the bigger fish. I was reading about how and why goldfish spawn. Grr, can't find the article. It was interesting. Talking about how goldfish are cannibals. Google "goldfish cannibal". You might find one fry outgrowing all of the other fry, called a "jumbo fry", due to the bigger fry eating the others once they get their mouth big enough to gulp down another. So, you need to seperate the jumbo fry from the rest.