Are young Grass carp suitable for my small/medium garden pond?
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I use inexpensive goldfish in my garden pond (the kind that cost 18 cents!). Regarding ponds and pond care, the following may be helpful:
1. Ponds need an ecosystem: fish, plants, aeration, bacteria, sun/shade, filtration.
a. Fish eat algae.
b. Plants shade fish and provide oxygen. Floating plants (water hyacinth) and submerged plants (water lilies) are good.
c. Aeration (bubbler, sprayer, waterfall) provides oxygen and helps prevent algae (algae hate moving water). Ideally your pump should circulate the number of gallons in your pond per hour (500 gallon pond = 500 GPH pump). If you have a fountain or a waterfall, ask a pond store employee to help you calculate the "lift" required for your pump.
d. Beneficial bacteria (available in liquid, powder, tablet) helps keep the pond balanced and helps combat algae.
e. Ponds need equal amounts of sun/shade.
f. You may want extra filtration in the form of a biofilter. A biofilter is simply a tub with a filtering medium (such as foam blocks) placed externally. Mine is at the top of my waterfall.
2. Birds eat fish. I placed milk crates upside down in my pond with stepping stones on the milk crates. Fish learn to hide in the milk crates when they feel threatened.
3. From personal experience: Place your pond where runoff from rainwater does not get into it. Pesticides, fertilizers, oil, whatever people dump in their yards, can run into your pond.
Happy ponding!
Birds will try stealing them if they are too small, also , how big is your pond ?
It can depend on what you class as a small/medium pond. Personally for small/medium pond I would suggest stick to the easy option and go for goldfish, shubunkins and comets.
Alot easier to keep and alot more colourful.
Sure. They're not very colorful though, and will get big really quickly, but they will work just fine for a year or two. Then I suppose you can use them for fertilizer.
i have a small/medium pond, it's 1200gals, i have grass carp in the pond, the largest is about 8lbs in weight about 16" long, all together i have about 14 grass carp in the pond, it has been established for about 20 years, hopefully this will answer your question. a word of warning, any carp will disrupt the bottom and margins of a pond, this can make plant growing quite difficult, i have had to come up with some weird and wonderful ways of securing my plant life. take care and good luck.
To be honest with you if you are hoping for it to control plant growth i bought one in april and the only time i saw it eat any plant growth was as soon as i put it, in it swam up to a lilly bud and ate it right of.But if you are hoping for growth then these are the fish for it.I got my grass carp at about 15cm he is now about 30 and still growing very fast so he is either got a secret suply of food or he just grows well.My pond is about 600gallons wish it could be bigger but havn't got the room.Not sure if i will still have the grass carp in 5 years as i guess he will have out grown it.
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