Foster Care for Two Goldfish

I am providing foster care for a friends two goldfish while she moved to a new house in October and rebuilds her pond. She originally had 20 goldfish but had a die off that only left 2. I didn't want to introduce her fish into my large pond in case they had a disease so I dug a 90 gallon pond for the foster care. Over the past couple of months I have added about 15 of my goldfish that were born this year to the foster care pond so she has a good stock to start her new pond. These pics show her two fish as they were being transferred to me and the 90 gallon pond I built for them.

Fish Come out for the Filter Cleaning

Today was clean the filter for the large pond again. One thing that is really fun is we get a great view of all the fish when the water is calm. The fish seem to be somewhat curious about the stillness and investigate. These two pictures are attempts to capture the number of fish that are hanging out under the filter. One shows the fish outlined by the shadow of the elephant ears that border the pond. The other from another angle show the mass of goldfish in the corner of the pond. We started the summer with only 10 fish and now we must have 100 after moving 15 to the foster care pond and giving 11 others to a friend.

Pond Infrastructure for Past Year

In this post, there are 4 pictures. The first is from a year ago just after the pond was finished. The second is the pond in March of this year with the Daffodils blooming which shows the lack of color in the woods at the end of Winter. The third shows the waterfall and Egret sculpture at the shallow end of the large pond. The little river runs from the waterfall to the large pond. The forth picture shows the large pond in early summer with the plants in place and duckweed and Water Hyacinth floating on the surface. The little river from the waterfall flows in at the left.

11 Golfish Transferred to Friends Pond

A friend of a friend setup a new pond a couple of weeks ago and he needed some fish (he only had two). With our abundance of Goldfish this year, we were happy to donate 10 fish to his pond. We wound up catching 11 Goldfish from 1 1/2 inches to 4 inches long to stock his pond. These fish were all born this spring so a couple had grown very fast. It was sad to lose those fish but several hours later it didn't look like we had less fish than before. We hope they will enjoy the new pond where it is much less crowded.

Huge Elephant Ears

Our Elephant Ears love being at the end of the large pond. They grow from bulbs we bought for summer 2004 and planted in other locations. They grew nicely but nothing like this year. Last fall we dug the bulbs up and split off the babies and stored them in peat moss over the winter. We started with 8 bulbs and after splitting we had 30. In spring 2005 we replanted the bulbs in many locations and I think every one sprouted but the ones at the end of the pond grew the biggest. The lamp post in the picture is 7 feet tall to give you and idea of size. Here is a front and back view of the Elephant Ears at the end of the pond. The downside is I will have to dig up all these bulbs before winter if I want to replant them next year.