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3. Question about Fish

Hi all
I was;t sure how or what to post this under. I know my friends on the board, would never make fun at or with me so here goes.:)

Do frogs eat gold fish?. This is getting really expensive, I have placed 80 gold fish in our gold fish pond. In a two week period I have one left, before you ask no turtles, heron, king fishers or neighborhood rascals. (kids) Their are three older Goldfish about 4 inches and a few tadpoles with a few frogs so water is ok . I know their are some really great minds on the forum ----Any Ideas.

Pond Manager

JAD AKA--Caddisman1

John-

Unless your frogs are bullfrogs, I would suspect another culprit. You didn't mention raccoons. And if the goldfish are small enough, like 1" or less, I would suspect some predaceous aquatic insect larvae, like dragonflies, water tigers (beetles), etc.

John, I suppose you do need to stop the predators, but in the meantime, do you want to look into buying "feeder goldfish" at a Petsmart? They're darn cheap. You might be able to keep up that way. Also, have you thought about putting a net over the pond, the kind of black nets used to protect blueberry bushes, etc. might foil some predators. Don't know what you'd do about dragonfly larvae etc., though. Taxon, would draining the pond and starting over be a cure?

Louis-



I wouldn't think so, at least not for long. Assuming predaceous insect larva are the problem, I would expect them to reappear following the first flight period.

However, I like your suggestion of netting, and then stocking with "feeder" goldfish, as that would (hopefully) eliminate the possibility of predation from above, which would seem the more likely scenario.

How about SNAKES?? As in garter and water snakes, both of which regularly include fish in their diets. Both types (probably eastern garter snake and northern water snake) are attracted to prime frog habitat, which most small ponds are - and frogs are very common in their diets too. So, the presence of frogs brings them in (snakes have an extremely good sense of smell, or taste I suppose because their tongues are their primary chemoreceptors), and then they probably find the goldfish easy pickings. If so, good luck keeping them out, and I don't recommend killing them either, both for ecological reasons and because, like beavers, more will just move in if the habitat is prime...Perhaps VERY fine mesh would work, like plastic screening - just make sure you watch out for holes because snakes can squeeze through very small ones (as my daughter found out when her baby corn snake disappeared one day). GOOD LUCK!

Jonathon

P.S. Replace them with koi? They're a bit on the large size for most fish predators...