Unidentified fish in my pond

[Gill Catton]

plus a lot of goldfish start of grey as babies don't they?

[Dogghound]

All goldfish start off bronze as fry and juveniles and develop their colour with age. Ive never seen a bronze (dark) goldfish with a white patch on it though.

[Madelinew]

Goldfish often lose their colour in the wild. And I didn't say it was dark I think the white spot is probably disease. Fortunately, the one I mentioned first is in a different pond. The other 3 are in my top pond and look very healthy with no untoward markings. The other one I never see but these 3 I spot daily now I know where in the murk to look....

[Madelinew]

Bearing in mind I have just cleared a lot of stuff from said ponds, I wonder if I should start feeding them. However, I suspect they are doing very well without me and there must be plenty of food in the silt for them with all the nymphs in there. The goldfish I have in a tank indoors are far from herbivorous - they ate any snails I put in and one has no eyes after the other did nasty things years ago and chomped off eyes and parts of fins - ew. Believe it or not my blind captive goldfish is now about 7 years old and if I separate them, they pine for each other.

[Gill Catton]

Originally Posted by Madelinew

Bearing in mind I have just cleared a lot of stuff from said ponds, I wonder if I should start feeding them. However, I suspect they are doing very well without me and there must be plenty of food in the silt for them with all the nymphs in there. The goldfish I have in a tank indoors are far from herbivorous - they ate any snails I put in and one has no eyes after the other did nasty things years ago and chomped off eyes and parts of fins - ew. Believe it or not my blind captive goldfish is now about 7 years old and if I separate them, they pine for each other.

Yeah I think you're doing just fine, the trouble is with feeding fish is that you can enrich the water quality which encourages algae growth.

My sister's friend had goldfish living in a horse trough (utterly unfed except for crumbs from horse's whiskers) that were nearly twenty years old! She took 'pity' on them and brought them indoors into a tank where they promptly died!

[~T~]

Yeh I would be inclined just to leave them as is if I were you. There will be plenty of natural foods for them in the ponds, most ponds usually can sustain goldfish with no additional food anyway. However I suspect it is illegal to have non indigenous fish such as goldfish in a water body that is not contained. It's certainly illegal to purposely introduce them though since this is of no fault of your own I wouldn't really worry about it. Where does this stream end up? Are there any larger pools along the way as there may be goldfish there.

Goldfish are present in a lot of waters over the UK as after a generation or 2 they revert to their wild form (perussian carp) which are more than capable of surviving in our climate. Near where I live about 20 years ago there was a canal full of huge ones as a nearby factory pumped warm water into the canal which greatly sped up their metabolism meaning that they attained weights of over 3lb in just a year. Locals caught them by the bucketload and the Scottish record goldfish was caught there. When the factory finally closed the local council had the canal partially filled to make it about 2 feet deep after a few local lads drowned and both of these factors put an end to this strange phenomenon. As part of the millennium project the canal was overhauled to be much safer but at the same time good for wildlife, a goldfish memorial bench was also erected along with other memorials. Locals say that to this day the odd big brown carp like fish is spotted surfacing briefly in that stretch of the canal but whether that's true or not is anybodies guess. As said goldfish are known to be pretty long lived.

[~T~]

Yeh I would be inclined just to leave them as is if I were you. There will be plenty of natural foods for them in the ponds, most ponds usually can sustain goldfish with no additional food anyway. However I suspect it is illegal to have non indigenous fish such as goldfish in a water body that is not contained. It's certainly illegal to purposely introduce them though since this is of no fault of your own I wouldn't really worry about it. Where does this stream end up? Are there any larger pools along the way as there may be goldfish there.

Goldfish are present in a lot of waters over the UK as after a generation or 2 they revert to their wild form (perussian carp) which are more than capable of surviving in our climate. Near where I live about 20 years ago there was a canal full of huge ones as a nearby factory pumped warm water into the canal which greatly sped up their metabolism meaning that they attained weights of over 3lb in just a year. Locals caught them by the bucketload and the Scottish record goldfish was caught there. When the factory finally closed the local council had the canal partially filled to make it about 2 feet deep after a few local lads drowned and both of these factors put an end to this strange phenomenon. As part of the millennium project the canal was overhauled to be much safer but at the same time good for wildlife, a goldfish memorial bench was also erected along with other memorials. Locals say that to this day the odd big brown carp like fish is spotted surfacing briefly in that stretch of the canal but whether that's true or not is anybodies guess. As said goldfish are known to be pretty long lived.

[Wetnwild]

It definitely is illegal to introduce non-native fish into a water body (such as this one) which drains into the wild, or to allow them to escape into such a water body. It's only legal to keep them in a completely-contained ornamental pond.

These may not be goldfish, though, they could be almost anything.

[berrymilan]

I can't say anything until i watch that fish. It may be trout but its very difficult to say anything without seeing it. Can you show us the snaps of that fish with us?

Fish Pond Leak

[~T~]

Originally Posted by berrymilan

I can't say anything until i watch that fish. It may be trout but its very difficult to say anything without seeing it. Can you show us the snaps of that fish with us?

Fish Pond Leak

I think it's been pretty much identified as a goldfish mate.