This is my first ever post on this forum and I should come clean and say I don’t have a pond myself. I am posting this on behalf of my father who is in his 80s and very much a technophobe who is not online. He has a pond in his garden in Bedford in the UK and he has observed a phenomenon that he thinks is weird and would like some explanation. I’m hoping someone here can help.
The pond is well established (20 years or more). It is roughly 2m by 1.5m and maybe 0.5m deep. It has a population of an unknown number of fish (goldfish/generic carp - I’m no fish expert!), probably over 100 of them. Also, the pond is prone to duckweed, which is the basis for this post. My dad periodically removes duckweed from the pond but finds it comes out with a host of insect life that he prefers to stay in the pond. He has tried a few ways to achieve this, but recently tried a new method. He made a square wooden frame from some leftover scraps of wooden batten, floated it on the pond and put the duckweed inside the frame. Then he left it overnight, hoping most of the insect life would move out so he could remove the duckweed the next day. But when he returned the next day the duckweed had completely disappeared. He assumed it had been eaten, or maybe the frame somehow caused it to sink. He repeated this a few times and determined the duckweed was being eaten by the fish. BUT the fish did not eat the duckweed under normal circumstances without a frame, or at least not in any significant amounts. So it seems constraining the duckweed inside the frame makes it MUCH more appealing to the fish. So much so that they ate all of it overnight. So we would like to know:
1) Has anyone else observed this behaviour or anything similar?
2) Can anyone explain it?
thanks for reading and for any info!
The pond is well established (20 years or more). It is roughly 2m by 1.5m and maybe 0.5m deep. It has a population of an unknown number of fish (goldfish/generic carp - I’m no fish expert!), probably over 100 of them. Also, the pond is prone to duckweed, which is the basis for this post. My dad periodically removes duckweed from the pond but finds it comes out with a host of insect life that he prefers to stay in the pond. He has tried a few ways to achieve this, but recently tried a new method. He made a square wooden frame from some leftover scraps of wooden batten, floated it on the pond and put the duckweed inside the frame. Then he left it overnight, hoping most of the insect life would move out so he could remove the duckweed the next day. But when he returned the next day the duckweed had completely disappeared. He assumed it had been eaten, or maybe the frame somehow caused it to sink. He repeated this a few times and determined the duckweed was being eaten by the fish. BUT the fish did not eat the duckweed under normal circumstances without a frame, or at least not in any significant amounts. So it seems constraining the duckweed inside the frame makes it MUCH more appealing to the fish. So much so that they ate all of it overnight. So we would like to know:
1) Has anyone else observed this behaviour or anything similar?
2) Can anyone explain it?
thanks for reading and for any info!
