Hello!

[addy1]

lol just don't feed the fish, mine have spawned x 6 or 7 and no fry yet. The hungry little suckers eat up the eggs. I do feed them, not every day, but if I see chasing going on the amount of food drops to almost nothing or nothing, until they are done chasing.

 

[buckry]

That's why the goldfish are staying in the goldfish pond, if it becomes a problem it will only affect the smaller pond and I can manage it a lot easier. I really don't want 500 baby goldfish affecting my koi so as soon as the pond is ready the two will be permanently seperated.

 

[buckry]

Awesome tip! Let them eat each other, saves money and keeps the population down.

 

[addy1]

Awesome tip! Let them eat each other, saves money and keeps the population down.

I can't kill anything, so to purge, cull is not something I can do. So I let nature take care of it. I have more water room for fish, it is up to survival of the fittest to grow and make it.

 

[buckry]

I just meant to let the goldfish eat as many eggs as they can. I'm not sure I'll be able to scoop out 10 goldfish and flush them down the toilet either, seems awfully unfair.

 

[sissy]

oh my that would be one for the plumber to handle then

 

[jenn.]

I like it! Very nice work :razz: It's funny but I have had goldfish for 5 years and never once had a baby goldie. We have had some koi born but just leaving them be naturally most got eaten (only 5 ever made it and only 3 of those made it to maturity).

 

[buckry]

See that sounds ideal to me, I don't want any more goldfish, and I would be ok with 1 or 2 new koi a year. I believe I could get rid of that many, but if I'm doubling my population every year I don't think my area is going to support that. I know of 2 people with koi in this area, and both ponds are 400 gallons. Neither one has any room for new fish. I know of one farmer with a pond that has talked about putting koi in it so I bet she would take some for a couple of years, but eventually she'll have enough. I guess my backup plan is to take them to work and dump them in the retention pond. Or I could put them in the river, maybe they'll swim upstream and end up in Lake Michigan.

 

[buckry]

You know I forgot to mention about my koi pond. My first shovel full of dirt had bricks in it. My second shovel had old nails. After that I found old glass mason jars, electrical insulators, charcoal, and my favorite the hardware from an old door, 2 hinges and a door knob. It was about this time I starting cursing the previous owners, how lazy do you have to be to dump garbage in your yard and bury it? But the next shovel I drove into the ground hit a rock. It was big, I dug around it and it was a perfect tan flagstone block. Over the course of the month as I dug I found enough flagstone to landscape the entire pond. Everything you see in the picture I posted was free, and found inside the whole that is now filled with water. I tried to convince my wife that this was a sign from above that we were meant to be koi owners, she didn't really buy it, but she was glad we save a couple hundred dollars on rock. That's the best story I have so far about my project, well aside from hitting the house's old well, but that's a story for another day.

 

[buckry]

We all really enjoyed watching the koi in the large pond tonight. In the small thing, all 24 fish were basically swimming together all the time because there was no place to go to get away from other fish. Now they have all of this room, and their little school is adorable. They spent a lot of time at the waterfall and exploring the deepend. They don't like the 3' section very well, I don't know why.

 

[addy1]

It takes them time to get used to new digs.

 

[buckry]

It was really hard to get them out of the small pond, but they don't seem stressed at all. I was really worried they'd be stressed and die after reading lots of horror stories here in the forum. I will say this, Koi are freaking geniuses. They were one step ahead of me the whole time, I had to drain the pond down to 2" and get super creative to catch them all. It took me about an hour to get all 11. I am missing one, not sure which one, i think he's been gone for a while but with 24 fish I didn't notice until now.

 

[pondlover]

I really like the shape of your pond. Congrats on being lucky enough to find so many rocks. I think that was our biggest expense!

 

[j.w]

Hey buckry whatever you do I wouldn't let those koi go in any wild lakes or rivers or you could be in big doo doo! The state of Maine has banned koi in ponds now because lots of people have let them go out in the wild and I guess they take over and make it hard for the natural fish to live there. If other states have the same problems they might all jump on the bandwagon. I think your best bet would be to put ads on Craigslist or if you have http://www.freecycle.org/ you can give away for free.

 

[buckry]

Our only body of water here is a pair of rivers and it would be cruel and unusual punishment to put anything living into them. They are really disgusting polluted rivers and right now with the drought we've been having they're probably down to just a few inches in most areas. It's pretty sad, but the good news is there is normally at least 1 blue heron on each side of every bridge in town, but I have yet to see a single one anywhere this summer, and believe me this year I'm looking hard for them. So I think these rivers are so devoid of life the herons just moved on. Good to know about Maine, I'll assume Indiana is the same way and just find alternate ways to get rid of babies.