A lot of my comets(goldfish) were feeder fish that grew too large for a very small exhibit pond. I tried to pick the most colorful ones with the longest fins when I bought them. The colors changed but I have some very nice long finned Comets now. I also have shubunkins that I love to watch as they spread their fins. They are very colorful.

Hi
When I first started my pond in 1982 I tried keeping some of the fancier GF but were wiped out by waterbirds ,
particularly night herons lol Switched to several species of tropical fish and through rapid reproduction ended up with mostly swordtails/platies. Though still eaten by the waterbirds they mostly were able to escape. then came the deep freeze of 09 which wiped out my entire stock added some 8 for a buck feeder GF Tthey have jumped from 8 to over a hundred and i don't think I've lost a single one to any predators , Go figure lol
The very fancy GF are far more delicate in every respect over the common varieties most notable is their inability to swim rapidly They don't have a prayer against predation lol
if that is not a major problem for you I'd say go for it . I'd definitely start with ones about the same size as your more common types Being inable to swim well they don't compete for food . Good luck gary

I have 4 fish. 2 are feeder goldfish from petsmart that were $0.10 each and 2 are shabunkins from a pond store that I paid $5 each for. They are all doing very well. I've had one of the feeder fish for 3 years and I started with him in a whiskey barrel. He is one tough fish! He thrived no matter how nasty the water got during times I forgot to do water changes. I moved him to my new pond last month and added his 3 new friends. My shabunkins did seem quite mean at first and would chase the feeder fish away from food, but that seems to have stopped. My only complaint about my feeder fish is that he changed color. I picked him because he was such a vivid, bright orange. He is now completely white! I'm not a fan of the white ones and don't think they are pretty at all, but oh well. There isn't a single speck of orange on him anymore. My husband said he must have gone through puberty. :)

As with the other posters, I have some Comets that were designated as feeders. 3 Comets I've had for 4 years. In my 500-gallon pond I have 3 large Comets, 6 smaller Comets, a couple dozen Rosy Red minnows and 2 Koi, one of them is a Butterfly Koi. I keep the Minnows as diversions for the Heron that come by from time-to-time, but since I put the fake owl on an 8-foot perch near the pond (last summer) I've had zero Heron sightings, and no missing fish. I've had Shibunkins in the past, I love 'em, but they have trouble making it through the winters here, or at least has been my experience. For ponds where it gets cold, it seems Comets are the ticket.

Don B.
Westminster, CO. (Pic is of my largest Koi)

I have comets and last year I feared the heron had eaten every one of them but last week, in the brief period of warmth we had, there were plenty of them swimming around under the parrots feather. I have about decided that our 'koi pond' will be a goldfish pond. As it's 175 feet long, putting a net over the whole thing is not feasible. Comets are 29 cents at the big box pet store. I'm just going to hope my plants cover more area this year, provide some broken pots for them to hide under and keep replinishing the gene pool. May add some shubunkins this year as well.

I used to have tropical bass in a large aquarium and I had to feed them 200 feeder fish a week. I ended up saving some that were so brave survived so long that I put them in another tank. These feeder goldies are now 10 to 12" long
what is surprising is that 1/2 of them are fancies and have beautiful flowing tails and colors. I found this post wondering if I could put these in my pond where I already have hundreds of smaller bluegills. (pond is 80 x 80 feet, 10 feet deep at deepest spot. I love them but they have outgrown my tank.

I have had comets and shubunkins. Both did really well and seemed hardy and friendly enough with one another. They all grew to 8 inches or a little more. The shubunkins looked like butterfly koi with the long flowing fins. Very pretty. I am more koi-centric these days.

Oh, yeah, and I got them all in the pet department at the big-box grocery store. They live for at least 5 years with very little trouble.

Sarassas only. Ours are mostly white with a red forehead. Occasionally one may lose the red head and we remove it.

My favorite inside aquarium goldfish is black moors. After one recovers from noticing the gross eyes they become quite graceful swimmers; pleasant to watch.

Hi:

I started with feeder comets and introduced Shubunkins. The Shubunkins cross-bred with the comets so I now have fish of many colors and patterns such as partly white and partly red.

13 feeder goldfish from PetSmart. The clerks there ask if the fish are going into a pond and try to catch the largest and most colorful for you. During two episodes of liner failure last year, I went to great lengths to save these cheap little buggers. Would have been so much easier to throw them into the compost pile and start over, but a person does get attached to living things, regardless of their pedigree.

Currently, dead. I didn't think it would get cold enough here (W. desert Colorado) to require a pond de-icer, so I just used bubblers. Well, after 2 weeks touching down into the -5 range, the bubblers froze up and eventually the ice was over 12" thick. Moral: get a pond deicer. I have raised lots of comets (ie feeders) and shubunkins and sarassas (the red & white ones) in a tiny pond in Michigan. As long as I had a de-icer, the fish did fine over real nasty winters (2-3 weeks where the High might get up to zero degrees F.) They also mixed things up, so to speak, so there were all sorts of babies. :)) I would suggest you quarantine any feeders, if possible; sometimes they are parasitized and you don't want to get everyone sick.

I have only Wakin Goldfish. I lost all but 3 to a Black Crowned Night Heron last Spring. Haven't lost any since I "fenced" the pond perimeter with fishing line in June. I just added 6 new Wakin and found a baby in the pump tank! So now I have 10.

This post was edited by nmpondguy on Sun, Apr 7, 13 at 9:08

Man, I get so jealous when I hear about 10 cent goldfish! About the only ones in shops around here are $3 for "standard" goldfish.

Hey Steiconi, let's do a house swap for a month and you can buy all the goldfish you want here in Ohio. :) Let's wait until August when it's a billion percent humidity, OK?

Hello, I'm from Pa., I just did my very first pond clean out. I have my pond for two and one/half years now. I know realize the importance of a pond cleanout. My pond is 2000 gallon, I am a koi lover. I have 8 koi now for the life of the pond. I also have 3, 3 inch baby koi from last years brood. We used approximately 20 ton of stone in the construction of the pond. The koi have many hiding places. Its difficult to remove them when the pond is fully functioning.
Craig

I have a small 160 gal pond with three (maybe 4) fish. One is orange comet and other two are black goldfish type and I saw one baby last fall about 1 1/2 " long. I can see only the orange fish because the others blend into the background, so I'm not sure if all survived the winter. No dead floaters though.