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.

Regards,
Lisa

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 :-))

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!

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.