confused and asking for advice...................

[aravenschild]

Ok, heres the question, I have a 900+ gallon pond (8'x8'x2' deep), with a 75 gallon bio filter,............

How many fantailed goldfish can I keep in it?

I've been told anywhere for 15 max to 1 per 25 gallons of water.

At the moment I have 18, ranging in size from 2" to 6", most are 4" or under. Is that to many? Or can I add a few more?

Thank you for your time,

Vicky/aravenschild

[miguynmkoi]

I would use Johns Fish Load Calculator http://www.gardenendeavors.com/rack/web17.html if I wanted to stick with the rules   

  But I can't and have waaaay too many fancy goldies of all kinds.  Therefore I use a big pump to move more water through my big bio filter.  It's been a year in my 1000+ gal lily pond and so for so good. 

PS Johns, you didn't see anything past your fabulous Garden endeavors website! 

[Amy]

Although I can not give an answer as to how many right off, I wanted to throw this out there as far as fantails go in ponds.....I'm not sure if your pond is established already on fairly new. I love fantails, they are so beautiful! The problem I have had with them is Blue Herons! My first water feature was one of those hard plastic barrel liners. I got 2 small beautiful fantails and 1 disapeared! At the time I was dumbfounded! What the heck happened to my fish! Next I had a small pond about 150 gallon, no problems. My pond now is about 1000 gallons and about 2 weeks after we put it in we had 2 fish picked off by a Blue Heron immediately!! If I had not saw him here by the pond I would never believe it! We had a goldfish that was about 5 inches long head to tail who was about 4-5 years old and only had one eye!....we have no idea what happened to his other eye! Anyway he disappeared as well as 2 fantails! Everyone else seemed to survive but I think the one eye guy got attacked on his blind side and the fantails got picked off because they can not swim fast!  :'( So maybe you already know but if you live in an area that has a problem with Blue Heron be very careful stocking a lot of them as they seem to be easy pickings since they swim slower Just an idea.... Good luck!

[miguynmkoi]

Good advice Amy.  My ponds have two layers of netting.  One above our heads and one directly over the pond.  We are so used to the netting over the ponds we don't notice them.  It's only when we see our local egrets that we try to focus on the nets to see if they are still there. 

Haven't had any problems....so far. 

[aravenschild]

The pond is 3 years old, and other then then a hungery stray cat (we caught her in the act of trying to catch a snack) and the bio-filter back flushing into the pond last year (what a mess!) I haven't had any trouble with it. (knock on wood)
As for blue herons or egrets, I haven't seen any...... I think it being so close to the house the birds just don't mess with it.

Thank you for the advice so far,.....

[Johns]

Vicky,

It depends......

Many people keep way too many fish in their ponds, either because they like the way they look, or because over
time the little buggers become big buggers and also they reproduce.  While there are many "Rules of Thumb" for
how many fish for a particular pond, I prefer one that allows the fish to survive in the event of a power failure that
may last a couple of days.  For this reason, the number of gallons and bio filter size are irrelavant as compared with water surface area, which is how oxygen gets into water naturally.

Other than water surface area, the important factor is how many pounds of fish you have.  This is a measure of
how much dissolved oxygen is needed to keep the fish alive without artificial aeration, such as a waterfall.  The best estimator of fish weight is length.  My calculator is designed for koi, so short stubby goldfish would be slightly different, but not significantly.

How to use the calculator:
First, print the page. Then take it out to your pool and count your fish. Count the number of fish that you have for
each size, placing a mark beside appropriate cell for each fish. Then count the number of each size of fish and
enter that number in the appropriate cell. Return to your computer and enter your data. Don't forget to enter "0" in
all the cells where you have no entry, or your answer will be "NaN".

Enter the average length and width of the pond and click on "calculate".  You will see the pounds of fish in your
pond and three different answers as to the pounds your pond might support: Maximum, Recommended, and Safe.
 Safe is for a pond with no areation or biofilter.

Your pond has an effective surface area (assuming no water lilies) of 64 square feet.  If all your fish were 6 inches in length, you could have 90 of them but if they were 15" fish, you could only have 7 fish.

See the calculator at :  http://www.gardenendeavors.com/rack/web17.html

[Julles]

Johns has a point.  On the Pond Tour yesterday, one guy with expensive show koi lost power for 8 days after Hurricane Ike.  He lost NO fish.  His pond is large, and it's quite deep.  He kept saying that his "low fish load" was the reason his fish survived for 8 days with no filtration and no aeration.

On the other hand, most people who had fish and lost power that same storm, including at least one person here, lost some or all of their fish. 

Lesson:  Understocking is safer than overstocking.  Rather than have a lot of fish you like, choose just a few that you really love.