I Knew It Would Happen: Goldfish Babies!

When I dug my pond last spring, I was thinking about the birds. They need water and a place to splash. I have a feeder station with six containers of food at the bird buffet. I thought that adding a water fountain and restroom was only the right thing to do. I read up on the topic and decided that a pond was a good thing to add to my wildlife habitat. I understood the pros and cons of ponds on a novice level as I filled it with (gulp) more than my fair share of precious drinking water. Unfortunately, I have yet to see a songbird bathing in the inch-deep lip that I designed around the pond's edge. However, it's more than just the birds, really. I am concerned about maintaining my yard as a habitat for whatever wildlife might happen by. And of course, my backyard is a Certified Wildlife Habitat. I had promised the National Wildlife Federation that I would provide a water source. My backyard marsh was taking a lot longer than I'd planed.

When the pond was filled, my husband looked at its still surface and worried about mosquitoes. Was I inviting a plague of mosquitoes to feast upon us? See VCE article noted above. No. A variety of wildlife, large and microscopic, will find the pond and keep the mosquitoes eggs in check by eating them for breakfast. Biodiversity. Natural checks and balances. Yada, yada. Very important. Natural balance. Insects are important. Down with pesticides. Read Bringing Nature Home.

Of course, one of the safeguards that I took was to add a few of the recommended goldfish to my pond to be quite sure that the mosquito larvae would be eaten. As a friend of native plants and a believer in restoring and maintaining natural ecosystems, it struck me as a bit hypocritical to throw a few Asian fish into my native ecosystem. But I did it anyway. I didn't think a natural, self-sustaining and wholesome community would form overnight. Besides, I wasn't going to release them into the wild. They would be contained in my little pond.

But then, I kind of got attached to the six little goldfish I bought for 27 cents apiece at Petco. My son loves to feed them. I told Lewis that it isn't necessary to feed fish in an outdoor pond because there's enough natural stuff for them and we especially want them to eat mosquitoes. We were sad when the first goldfish disappeared, we knew not where. But then a couple of American Bullfrogs took up residence in the pond. We had fun listening to them and other amphibians. We took lots of photos.

I knew that multiple fish in a pond would lead to more fish in a pond some day, but the people at Petco assured me that the goldfish needed three years to reach sexual maturity. I thought I had another year or so. But I wondered about this when I saw a couple of fish chasing another fish around the shallow rim, crowding against her, splashing, and causing her to practically jump out of the pond. Gang rape, that's what it was. Goldfish rape. We observed this conduct several times during the summer. We guessed it was breeding behavior. Turns out the folks at Petco were wrong. Virginia Tech's Virtual Aquarium says they mature in one year. Sadly, another fish disappeared soon after Lewis returned to college. But that changed quickly enough.

At first, I told my husband that there were some sort of tiny black creatures swimming about in the pond. We thought they might be the frogs' offspring. In a few more days, one of the black things turned gold. Now I'm counting about 10 or 12 small (little finger sized) goldfish. I see lots more tiny and tinier goldfish. Since goldfish lay about 400,000 eggs at a time, I wondered if we'd soon be overrun by them.

A bit of research confirmed my suspicions. Remember that wildlife-eat-wildlife world we live in? That natural balance we talk about all of the time? Natural forces are keeping the goldfish in check. There may be several species dining on the goldfish, but it seems to me that the frogs that lurk on the shallow shelf probably love them the most. Heh! Is that where the two fish that disappeared went? According to National Geographic, it just might be so.