My goldfish pond

[CometKeith]

CE, It was getting really brown here too but we have had a lot of rain the last 14 days or so (10 of last 14 days it has rained) and things have come back really good. We have tried opening the windows and doors lately but now we are getting hit with a really strong skunk smell every night. I left some outside lights on tonight to scare the skunks away and it wasn't as bad. When we were in southern Wisconsin a few weeks ago everything was really brown and they had watering bans. I hope you get rain. Unfortunately it might be too late for a lot of the farmers in central Illinois. We thought corn prices were supposed to be high and my wife bought 5 ears of corn for a dollar at the local fruit/vegetable market. She asked the owner how he had a sale like that and he said he went to Michigan himself to pick up the corn! Larkin, If my memory serves me correct are you still thinking of the aquatic/pond learning center? I think you will get a lot of visitors with what you have created. Cajunmeme, sorry you can have some of our sun. We hit the 37th day with 90 degrees or more this year which is crazy for Chicago.

 

[CometKeith]

The water hyacinth are shooting up flowers now. I think the fact that raccoons are trying to destroy them every night now has something to do with it. I read that they grow flowers when they are stressed out. In the second pic if you look hard you can see some of the baby fish. Also something I realized the other day... My bio-filter has not needed to be cleaned all summer and the water flow is good. I think it helped when I put the pump on a shelf this year. I was trying to have it so that the pond's water wouldn't be pumped out all the way if something happened to a hose or filter, and I got the added benefit of not having to clean my filter so much. Now I just need to net out the bottom and don't have the muck clogging up my filter.

 

[addy1]

Pretty flowers and fish! Netting the bottom is pretty easy, except all the snail saving I have to do. Have a bunch of trap doors and a whole bunch of tiny ones.

 

[j.w]

Nice blooms and yep I can see the fish barely amongst all those plants.

 

[CometKeith]

Thanks addy, I agree that netting it is way easier. Last year I was cleaning the filter every week and now it has run clean all summer. I don't know why i didn't think of raising it up more before and putting it on a shelf. Also if we go away I'm a lot more comfortable knowing the two pumps I have won't pump all the water out if something breaks. JW, I shouldn't have said anything about the raccoons. The night after I took the picture they made even a bigger mess than usual and naturally tried eating the water hyacinths that bloomed. I have so many baby fish now. There must be at least 20 and I keep seeing new arrivals all the time. With all the plant cover the water has stayed nice and cool despite the ridiculous amount of ninety degree days we have had. I try to keep it around the recommended 70% coverage.

 

[j.w]

Darn raccoons! Maybe you should make a water spot like a low tub of some sort and put a bunch of the hyacinth that you don't need into the tub for the raccoons to munch on and keep them away from your pond. They are prolly really freaking out the fish too when they enter the pond.

 

[addy1]

Good going baby daddy! Must mean your pond is a happy one.

 

[CometKeith]

JW, I actually have a 5 gallon bucket of wh I take out everyday but they prefer the fresh ones in the pond. I think they are also snooping for snails. That might be a good idea to set some aside in a small water container for the raccoons. addy thanks, I am attaching more baby photos. I think I have around 10 black or dark brown ones,around 10 shubunkin babys.10 mixtures of orange and black, and about 1/2 dozen red rosie minnows and a few other assorted white etc. In the 5th and 6th pics it is hard to see all the black ones but you can see their shadows on the bottom of the liner. I assuming these will turn orange? i had a black baby goldfish before but it turned orange when it was much smaller. Some of the black ones are getting big and are close to 2 inches now.

 

[addy1]

Nice looking fish Keith, like that spotted shubbie.
My dark ones have mostly become dark shubbies with multiple colors, but still dark. It took about a year. I have a few dark fish still, but they are like a burnished gold, actually pretty.

 

[cajunmeme]

I have a goldfish that never did turn orange. It is the largest goldfish in the pond and is probably 3 years old. I keep thinking he will turn orange, but nothing let.

 

[j.w]

Love your pretty fish w/ those long tails. I want them so bad! Can't seem to find any at the pet stores here. I keep looking!

 

[CometKeith]

Addy, I actually read a whole thing on black or wild comets. I guess they are around and especially down under, but don't know how any would end up in my pond. I always thought it was a natural selection thing that the black or tan fry survive because of the color they have when they are first born, but then always change colors later on. I'll keep watching them and see if they are comets, shubunkins, or just carp. Cajunmeme, so it's black then? Feel free to post a pic here. It would be interesting to see. JW. Probably the two nicest ones; the one with orange in it's tail and fins, and the red spotted one were $5.99 at petsmart. Obviously they did not look like these when they were purchased. The most expensive one was under $10. The shubunkin with the really long tail was bought for $1.99. It was very small when I got it and it's color has really developed the last year or so. Somewhere I read that males tend to have longer tails than females of the same age and type of fish. I don't know if this is true at all, but the last few years I did not always buy the fish with the longest tail in the hope to get more females. Now half of my fish are breeding females. I think that is why I ended up with so many babys. In the past I only had a few females. It's kinda weird but because they have been spawning this year so much I know the sex of all the mature goldfish in the pond.

 

[callingcolleen1]

Very nice Keith! Little babies are sure coming along! They are just sooo cute! Now you will have to get a large pond!

 

[CometKeith]

Thanks Colleen, The whole point of keeping goldfish was that I wouldn't be forced to enlarge my pond unless I wanted to. I have been generally good at not overstocking it unless I got some free fish which was hard to turn down. Also I have not gotten any koi which would have forced me to enlarge the pond as they grew. My low number of fish was about a dozen and at one time I had 17 before I ran into trouble in the Spring. Now I have 12 adults and 20-30 babies not including the minnows. It is going to be a dilemma as the babies all grow. I am probably guilty of overfeeding them now because it has been fun to see the babies grow and as they get bigger they come closer to me, and to the surface where I can see them. I am doing three light feedings a day with flakes. Several of the babies are close to 2 inches already. At one point about a month ago my wife okay'd an expansion and then she quickly took it back the next day. So we will see...

 

[callingcolleen1]

Well I won't have to worry about having too many fish cause someone ate most of the little babies in the front yard pond, they just started to disappear into thin air! I did see a rather large grass snake seeking around the front yard pond and the bottom pond with the babies in the back yard too. I have seen that snake twice now, and yesterday I found a one inch goldfish outside of the pond,was dead and appeared to be mangled too. I'm just going to have to catch him and give him a one way ticket to the creek, like I did that last one a few years ago.