Baby Fish in the Pond This Year.

13 years ago

Hi everyone-

I posted and hung out on this forum lots and lots the year I got my stocktank pond in the spring of 2008. I had it above ground all summer. Then in the fall I put it inground. I still love it and am so glad I put it inground as it looks great that way. Anyway, I started with too many fish, had some problems but eventually things settled down. I ended up with 2 shubunkins, four rhosy red minnows and one koi which lived in the pond, did not reproduce. Then this spring I lost the koi. Meantime I had put a feeder goldfish into the pond in the fall to overwinter from one of my tiny 35 gallon ponds were I knew it would never make it overwinter.

So the 'big' pond is a 300 gallon oblong stocktank. The fish had never made babies before. But Surprise, surprise. This spring there is a little school of baby rosey red minnows. They like to swim around close to the surface part of the time so I noticed them long ago. They are just getting bigger. There are at least 8 of them.

But today I was really peering down to the bottom and the light was right and I saw two small dark colored (as in not colored up) baby goldfish in there too. I was so surprised. The subunkins never had babies before. Maybe they are both the same sex and the feeder fish was just what they needed? Just a guess on my part. Now of course, there could be more of the baby goldfish that I could not see. I guess the pond life is a sucess if they are breeding. Guess I don't have to worry about adding more rosey red minnows as I had planned to do this spring. My fish already added them for me.

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Comments (6)

sleeplessinftwayne
13 years ago
My guess is you have shubunkins. I don't think the new goldfish had anything to do with it. The shubunkins just were not mature enough.
goodkarma_
13 years ago
Glad to see you posting again Rita. :) There is always some surprise every year for us ponders. Perhaps that is part of the attraction to ponding. Life just finds a way when you add water to the landscape. BTW- Would love it if you posted some pics of your stocktank pond this year.

Regards,
Lisa
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annedickinson
13 years ago
Ditto what Lisa said. It was great seeing your screenname again.
Anne
newyorkrita
Original Author
13 years ago
I have never lost my interest in the pond. I just was super obsessed with it the first year and fussed and fussed. The more I fussed the more things went wrong. The second year I did pretty much nothing to it. I cleaned my pump filter when needed and fed my fish just a very little. Had some water hyacinths on top. All went very well, no problems at all.

I would come here and lurk when I had time but just didn't post.

I am so glad I put in that 300 gallon in ground. It was one of my better ideas. I have enjoyed my pond and being able to have some fish so much.

This was a big surpise to me to see the baby fish this year. Of course I know from reading many other posts that fish breed in the ponds but I didn't notice anything unusual going on. Plus I figgured if they did spawn that the eggs or the small fry would get eaten. Appareantly not so. So at least not all of them.

I am really glad to have a little baby rosey red minnows, I really wanted to add more anyway. Now the fish did it for me. As for the goldfish, I will have to watch and see if they turn out to be shubinkins. I think I might try to take that feeder fish out of there although how I will be lucky enough to net it, I don't know!

Thanks for the welcome back ;-))

I will take pictures of the pond and post them as soon as I can :-))
newyorkrita
Original Author
13 years ago
I was looking at the baby fish again today for quite awhile. I saw one of the goldfish baby types quite clearly. It is starting to color up so you can see black on the tail and top fin. It does not look like a shubunkin but rather a common goldfish with some black. When I buy the feeder fish I often get some with some black pattern on them somewhere. Same with white. I get feeder fish with white on them often also.

It also could be that my shubunkins are both the same sex. When I next go buy fish I will look for another shubunkin to add. Probably will not be looking really soon though!
pondbucket
13 years ago
Rita, I second what was said about the fish needing to mature. I had about a dozen fish all total, shubunkins, comets, other goldfish. The first two plus years I never had any fish breed, besides the mosquito fish.

This year I have some of each. I probably have about 8 new fish that already have their color and that are about 2 inches long. I probably have another dozen or two, from what I can tell - there's a lot of habitat for them to hide around, that are 1 inch long with lesser color. I even have some tiny fish but I can't tell if they're Gambusia or not... I didn't think any of them overwintered this year. Hmmmm.