Too many gold fish

Question
I started off with 2 goldfish that my children got from the pet store about 13 years ago. I build a pond. Now I have so many gold fish that I can count them. My problem is: I do not know what to do with so many in my pond,they keep producing. How do I get the to stop having baby

Answer
Hi Sheila;

There's nothing you can do to stop the fish from spawning, and you don't really want to do that anyway. The females can die if they become egg-bound from inability to lay their eggs. There are however a couple of natural things you can do to encourage the fish to eat the eggs and hatched babies to avoid more overcrowding in the future.

Start off first by decreasing the amount of food you give them (if you do feed them), or only supplement their diet with pellets or flakes 3 days a week instead of everyday. Well fed fish tend to reproduce pretty well. There are usually plenty of bugs and algae for them to feed on outdoors so pond fish don't always even need feeding in the warm summer months. Less help from us will encourage them to develop their natural instinct of foraging more so they will have a better chance to find the eggs and eat them.

It also helps if they have easier access to the spawning sites. Thin out the plants so the fish can swim inside and around the groups of them. You could also pull apart groups of plants that you can see have eggs on them and push them out into the pond so the fish can feed on them. Eggs are great food for your fish so don't feed them anything else that day.

You could also offer some of your fish to your community free. There are bulletin board web sites such as Craig's List and groups such as Freecycle that you can put them up on. People in your area might be glad to get some free mosquito control in their ponds and animal water troughs. Depending on where you live of course. ;-)

Good Luck!

At Your Service;
Chris Robbins