Pond Goldfish October 2015

Goldfish Pond Oct 2015 (Found this in my draft file.)

We cleaned out the pond this week (Oct.1st) and pulled almost 50 goldfish out this year!  We still had 6 small spare goldfish in the 20 gallon tank inside the house. Of course the year that I kept spares, nothing happened to the fish in the pond ( like in some previous years).

We drained our pond and netted the fish as the water dropped. There was a layer of leaves and slug in the bottom of the"deep end" of the pond and numerous little grey babies were trying to hibernate there. Since the pond is so shallow, they would have frozen solid eventually.  Not sure why, but we had a number of casualties this time, mostly the smallest babies. Maybe the water in the "rescue pails" was too cold.  We still have more than enough gold fish, though, to fill the pond again next spring and then some!

I believe that all the adults (14 large and medium sized) that we put into the pond this spring survived.
There are now 10 large to mediums in the 30 gallon tank (in the laundry room ), as well as 4 grey babies. There are 11 small/ medium goldfish in the 20 gallon tank and about 14 surviving grey babies.

We lost a few tiny ones which got stuck on the filter intake… :(
I cleaned that filter this morning and added another intake tube to make it longer so hopefully the rest of the little fish will be okay.

Ended up giving away 12 of my goldfish to someone who came to the house to look at my big 140 gallon tropical tank.

March 2016
All the goldfish survived the winter in the house. No casualties. We are experiencing a wonderful warm early spring, even earlier than what spring 2015 was, so hopeful we can put the goldfish back out in the pong in April.