breeding mixed goldfish

[Cathy Raphael]

I saw a thread about some beautiful mixed goldfish breeding - and thought I would add my 2 cents. I have all goldfish - and always at least 1 or 2 fantails (my favorites). I bought a white goldfish with a yellowish head at a fish store here in Newark and it kept chasing my other fish around. (Only recently did I read that that was a MALE fish behavior - trying to get the females to drop their eggs). Lo and behold, last year I had about 50 babies in 3 hatchings. Some were quite pretty. Now I am discovering that apparently that white fish was either a koi or part koi - and another one I have is probably the same ("Lucy" - a white fish with a red head! I love Lucy!) Anyway - apparently I have at least 2 progeny of Lucy's which are white with reddish orange large spots and they are gorgeous! A friend tells me that you can't breed Koi with regular goldfish. I think that must not be true. Also - I had a "visit" from a heron this summer when I (very briefly) removed my net - and lost my best and largest comet. Then I saw a brightly colored LARGE (4' long) fish "kite" for sale - with huge white eyeballs - and bought it and hung it by my pond. NO MORE HERON VISITS! As well as moving in the wind, the eyeballs on the kite I think scare other animals. Now my last item is that my neighbor cut down a tree which shaded my pond - (20 yrs old) - and the water is horrible! I have added all kinds of barley stuff and chemicals to clear it - and nothing works. It is DARK olive green. Is my only recourse to change 2/3 of the water? (that is worrisome because we have town water with chlorine in it...) Help! (oh - p.s. I don't have a filter. Just an aerator.)

 

[JamieB]

To address the issues: 1) yes they can cross breed. Just like a horse and a donkey, you get a mix that will probably be steril. 2) good idea to have something that drives heron away. 3) water quality, the water may be dark, but it’s doing a job that’s otherwise possibly harmful to fish, you need to get something to filter the water. We are big on bog filters here, they require no filter pads, minimal maintenance, when done correctly and the right size they prevent algae aside from a small bit at the beginning of spring depending on where you live, maybe none if you don’t get freezing weather that makes plants go dormant. But any filter is better than none. So, get a pond pump, set it up, then fill a perforated laundry basket, fill it with polyester quilt batting, and set the pump up to flow over that. That will filter out the algae. You’ll need a filter to remove the fish waste, and the pump is a start for that. Think of the pond as a house. If you don’t have plumbing, and can’t leave the house to use an out house, waste builds up. The way a healthy pond works is fish do their thing, bacteria breaks it down, plants remove it and grow big and strong. That’s why bog filters are so great. The bog plants remove the waste, the rock provides plenty of space for bacteria to colonize and break down the waste to less harmful forms that the plants can use. A filter catches the waste so you can remove it, thus requiring you to change filter pads or at least rinse them.
Another thing, go post on the introduction section if you havent. Let us know how big your pond is, how many fish, what kind, plants, and some info about you!

 

[Cathy Raphael]

Well - I have a good aerator and a lot of plants & I use stuff like Microbe Life, etc. 850 gal pond - with 3.5 feet at one end (where they go down in the winter). About 15" at the other end. We used to switch out 3/4 or 2/3 of the water in the beginning (21 yrs ago) - and hose it to the garden, where the plants grew like the dickens. Now we are old & haven't done that. Also - we have a lower budget. Will see what we can do....

 

[JamieB]

there are cheap options. A diy basket made from window screen, just sew up the corners, and set it on stuff so it sits in just a few inches of water, and add a few iris plants. Watch Craigslist for others in your area looking to divide water lillies, rushes, other water plants. A less pretty option to have a planter would be a plastic laundry basket, filled with polyester quilt batting, the plants roots will go through that and it will trap waste till it’s dingy looking, quite ugly, but it works, I’ve done it as a temp cheap filter, added iris, mint, and some day lillies. Plants thrived, kept it where the plants were just wet at the roots. If you do it right, with the right plants, the polyester fill could be hidden quickly by plants.