- Joined
- Jul 14, 2018
- Messages
- 539
- Reaction score
- 486
- Location
- Huntsville, AL
- Hardiness Zone
- 7B
- Country
I started my pond in 2019 with five 2-nch shubunkins. Two mostly white with some orange spots, 2 mostly orange with blue and black spots and one blue, black and orange speckled. I meant to get just three, but the pond shop offered me five for the same price. Now that I am more experienced, I realize they just wanted to get rid of the fish no one wanted. ANYWAY, the water was solid green the first year until my bog started working. Late that first year, the water cleared and we discovered a bunch of babies from several spawns during the summer. The next spring, I was cleaning out the upper pond that is solid plants, AND I found two black babies in that pond. I moved them to the big pond. Later on, I found two more black ones and even later I found one more...all solid black. I read somewhere that if the babies are not exposed to light they do not develop colors and stay dark. Maybe that is true as the upper pond is deep but truely solid plants top to bottom with a solid cap of red ludwigia with hornwort to the bottom.
So I now had five black shubunkins that were the result of eggs being sucked into the skimmer, through the pump and pipes and dumped into the upper pond. Maybe the eggs got damaged during this process and that is why they all were black.
My five, formerly solid black shubunkins of various sizes from 11/2 to 3 inches, have recently started changing colors. Not the normal shubunkin colors though. They are very dark, reddish- brown on top and golden yellow on the bottom. There coloration makes them all but invisible in the pond.
I now have 18 shubunkins in the pond. The five originals all about 8+ inches and a variety of sizes for the rest. Of them I have five almost all white ones and the rest black, blue and orange. Several of them have a more golden-orange and the others a red-orange. Of the five originals, there is one white and one mostly orange females. So the black ones likely came from these two.
You may be asking, why am I posting all this information. Well when I first started someone thought they had a bass in there pond. I now believe they just had one of these black babies that changed to the color I mentioned above. Second, I am considering removing all the formerly black fish as they are now large enough to spawn and I really do not want or need any more black ones. They are hard to see in the pond and probably will never develop the beautiful colors of the other fish.
In case the skimmer, pump trip is what caused the five to end up black, I have decided to turn the upper-pond into another bog and eliminate the possibiliy of any eggs developing there in the future and producing more black babies.
Lastly, my pond has provided great entertainment and enjoyment from the family and the neighborhood children. I am so glad we put it in. Now that the bog is working great, there isn't much in the way of maintenance and the water stays very clear. I am looking forward to repotting my water lillies and the other plants in the pond.
Fall last year below.
This year with two dark fish at the bottom and one in the middle top of the photo. The brown color can be seen on the middle top fish that is surfacing
So I now had five black shubunkins that were the result of eggs being sucked into the skimmer, through the pump and pipes and dumped into the upper pond. Maybe the eggs got damaged during this process and that is why they all were black.
My five, formerly solid black shubunkins of various sizes from 11/2 to 3 inches, have recently started changing colors. Not the normal shubunkin colors though. They are very dark, reddish- brown on top and golden yellow on the bottom. There coloration makes them all but invisible in the pond.
I now have 18 shubunkins in the pond. The five originals all about 8+ inches and a variety of sizes for the rest. Of them I have five almost all white ones and the rest black, blue and orange. Several of them have a more golden-orange and the others a red-orange. Of the five originals, there is one white and one mostly orange females. So the black ones likely came from these two.
You may be asking, why am I posting all this information. Well when I first started someone thought they had a bass in there pond. I now believe they just had one of these black babies that changed to the color I mentioned above. Second, I am considering removing all the formerly black fish as they are now large enough to spawn and I really do not want or need any more black ones. They are hard to see in the pond and probably will never develop the beautiful colors of the other fish.
In case the skimmer, pump trip is what caused the five to end up black, I have decided to turn the upper-pond into another bog and eliminate the possibiliy of any eggs developing there in the future and producing more black babies.
Lastly, my pond has provided great entertainment and enjoyment from the family and the neighborhood children. I am so glad we put it in. Now that the bog is working great, there isn't much in the way of maintenance and the water stays very clear. I am looking forward to repotting my water lillies and the other plants in the pond.
Fall last year below.
This year with two dark fish at the bottom and one in the middle top of the photo. The brown color can be seen on the middle top fish that is surfacing