Fishy question for pond keepers

[exo]

Do golden rudd breed true?

Got a pond full of these fry, 100's or probably 1000's,
about 5 mm long 1/2 mm wide, damn difficult things to get a photo of in the pond.



First time in 10 years the rudd have spawned, was wondering if to make any extra effort to help them.

any help appreciated.

[N0z]

I dont know about your pond but to help these fry you could put in more plants which will provide them with more cover (if you dont have any or enough plant already) and sorry but i dont know what it is :/

[Dogghound]

Rudd can breed at a rapid rate, especially with the warm year we are having. However unless you have a lot of cover the fry will quickly be predated. Unless you have a large pond I would not worry to much about them surviving or you will have 100's of small rudd and nothing else, with green smelly water.

Do you have any other fish in the pond? hard to ID it from this image.

[exo]

Actually I'm thinking I think it's more a question of how to stop too many surviving, rather than the reverse - there's 1000's !

Plenty of cover & hiding places N0z, the big fish won't be interested till the rudd are much bigger, then they won't be able to catch them
Pond is biggish about 10' x 30' x up to 5.5' deep (~15 tonnes of water), but not a wildlife pond by any stretch (got one of those as well),
still get plenty of wildlife in it : frogs/toads/dragonflies/newts/all the crawlies & skater types & all, especially in the back settlement filter = froghome.


Yes I agree Dogghound, I reckon wild rudd are the fish equivalent of weeds in ponds all over Britain,
seen a few farm-land ponds you could almost walk across the water on the stunted rudd shoals.

However if these breed true gold/red (gonna ask in the fish shop tomorrow), then they're a bit more 'valuable' I guess.

Anyway, some piccies of the pond & surrounds at various times of the year, 1st one taken about 30 mins ago,
2nd one show the 'golden rudd' (the nearest red fish near the surface) :

[tom00_uk]

as with any highly selected blood line, you will get some true, some sort of part true part original and others looking for like the original.

With a animal thats breeds so readily theres little value in it, nice to see a fish pond thats not overstocked, i bet your glad that for the last 10 years the other fix have been readily eating the fry

Fishbase does not recognise it at all, which is odd,

[exo]

You wouldn't believe how much - I've spent hundreds of £ on water just re-filling the pond
after having to drain it to catch the fingerling carp & give them away.

Sort of luckily the single 'matriarch' died about 3 years ago & all that stopped,
thought I'd got a stable population - but life finds a way, to paraphrase Goldblum.


Looked at fishbase - obviously doesn't including ornemental fish (?)

Maybe I guess then leave things to themselves & see what turns up...

[N0z]

Originally Posted by exo

Actually I'm thinking I think it's more a question of how to stop too many surviving, rather than the reverse - there's 1000's !

Plenty of cover & hiding places N0z, the big fish won't be interested till the rudd are much bigger, then they won't be able to catch them
Pond is biggish about 10' x 30' x up to 5.5' deep (~15 tonnes of water), but not a wildlife pond by any stretch (got one of those as well),
still get plenty of wildlife in it : frogs/toads/dragonflies/newts/all the crawlies & skater types & all, especially in the back settlement filter = froghome.


Yes I agree Dogghound, I reckon wild rudd are the fish equivalent of weeds in ponds all over Britain,
seen a few farm-land ponds you could almost walk across the water on the stunted rudd shoals.

However if these breed true gold/red (gonna ask in the fish shop tomorrow), then they're a bit more 'valuable' I guess.

Anyway, some piccies of the pond & surrounds at various times of the year, 1st one taken about 30 mins ago,
2nd one show the 'golden rudd' (the nearest red fish near the surface) :

whats the plant in the third picture across ?
and what is a 'matriarch' ?

[tom00_uk]

the white flowering arum lily Noz?

[N0z]

Originally Posted by tom00_uk

the white flowering arum lily Noz?

thats the one, thanks

[exo]

Yes ordinary Arum lily, it grew so large last year that I had to take it out,
the pot had fallen in to 5' deep, but suprisingly it flourished & basically took over.

By matriarch I meant the only female koi (and significantly the largest) left of the group I bought about 30 years ago.
Every year all surfaces in the pond would be coated with fertilised eggs, ending up with soooo many tiddlers.
So it was sort of a bit of a relief when she got egg-bound one year & died.

But it's happening again with the rudd