Goldfish

[Bren MacFish]

People keep twisting my arm to start a thread about how to breed goldfish and with summer coming it's probably going to all start getting sexy out in your goldfish pond or tank anyway.

Generally goldfish really get serious about breeding after they're about 8cm/3 years old, altho younger fish have had successful batches of eggs and enjoyed lovely meals of whitebait and caviar. That's the thing about goldfish, they breed profusely and eat profusely and they're not fussy about what they eat. If you want the eggs to survive, your pond or tank will have to be heavily planted or you will have to devise some safety barracks comprising of fine mesh netting, or you will have to move the eggs to a fully cycled tank.

Male goldfish about this time of year start "starring up". They get little white bumps along the front of their pects and on their gill covers. This indicates that they will soon be chasing and bumping every other fish in the pond. Females will start to fatten up. There's a whole inny and further inny thing about their sexual organs but I can never work that out.

The males chase the females and bump them until they release sticky eggs which stick to plants or breeding mops, and then they spray milt at them. They can do this every two weeks for the whole of summer if the food is abundant enough.

You don't need a male to get eggs but you do need a male to get fertilised eggs. Fertilised eggs look like clear pink caviar, unfertilised eggs quickly turn milky and then furry with fungus and need to be removed.

Factors that induce spawning are heat, fresh water, high protein food, and high air pressure. So if you're dealing with tank fish and you hear that a thunderstorm is coming your way, change the water a couple of days before, add a heater to the tank and feed them some live food and they will put on quite a show once that thunderstorm hits. They will probably put on a bit of a show within a week anyway.

My personal method: wait for late summer when the tree above the pond drops loads of aphids, do a water change and ignore. Then when the water cabbages are leaping, the dog yanks then out of the pond, kills them and brings them to me. I then growl at him for throwing my lovely plants on the hot bricks, notice that they're full of eggs and then swear profusely because I have no cycled tank standing by and the goldfish in the pond have managed to eat almost all vegetation. Even the cabbages only do shift work there and take long days off in a large fish free bucket.

The eggs are quite sturdy, as you may have guessed, but the newly hatched fry aren't. You can move eggs around but not fry. The eggs/new fry will do better in lower water pressure so keep your tank under 20cm deep. You can top it up bit by bit after the first week.

Law of goldfish - the more you ignore newly hatched goldfish, the more will survive.

Goldfish fry will live on their egg sack for the first few days and then infusoria and algae for the rest of that first week. A bit of pond water or an established tank is good. Then, you start with the liquid food three times a day... a chore you have to keep up for about a month until they're ready for powdered food. Goldfish fry are tiny and slow growing compared to bettas and will look like sticks with eyeballs for ages.

You can buy liquid fry food or blend a little egg yolk with water to make a liquid food. They'll only need a couple of drops per feed. And syphoning the bottom every couple of days... into a white bucket so you can pick out the fry... is very important to maintain water quality. Small water changes are better than large. Parameter changes will make them unhappy.

The natural mortality rate is quite high, about one a day is quite normal but this tapers off after the first few weeks. 30/100 is considered a fairly successful attempt at raising goldfish fry! Altho the experts do much better than that.

About three months in, you will have a lot with crooked spines, weird swim bladders, jutting jaws, or stunted growth and in my experience all of these will eventually develop complications and die, so if you want to provide the healthy fish with more room, you'll need to cull them or start an institutional tank for the fishily challenged.

I've found that ground up freeze-dried bloodworms are a great high-protein powdered food to boost growth and colour. Of course you can feed all the fresh foods you'd feed to betta fry after the first month when the food particle size can start to increase. About six months down the track they can start on goldfish flake crumbled up, they stop dying for no apparent reason and start consuming all plant life in your tank. The shibunkins and other non-reflective scaled fish will already be coloured up and the metallic fry will start to show their final colours, they've been khaki up till now. A percentage will just turn bronze like their carp ancestors and that is nature trying to show you how she meant them to look.

Shibunkins are by far the hardiest goldfish and if you look at their lineage they are very close to their carp ancestry. Commons, comets and fantails are also hardy. There is a saying that if the world had a nuclear holocaust tomorrow, all that would be left are cockroaches and carp.

The common shibunkins we get here have tails that just keep on growing their whole lives so they become very impressive large fish and need lots of room as do comets and commons and will almost always end up out in a pond. The fancy goldfish need less room but grow slower and are harder to breed and raise.

Do you know about the goldfish called Bruce Lee?

Bruce is a three year old oranda and is the world's longest goldfish at 40cm. He set the record when only 37.5cm.

Photo of Bruce

[Mpearce]

I've had quite a bit of luck with breeding gold fish and can't praise the "left alone" method.

I have a pond at home with 3 pools, the top is a large box constructed from railway sleeper that has a cascade out to a filter pond heavily loaded with duck weed, to a quite deep pond at the bottom with a pump taking water back up to the sleeper box. Its heavily planted with lily pads, vietnamese mint, elodea, water cabbages and a fuzzy plant that grows in and above the water.

Over 3 summers the fish have gone from 4 comets to well over 35 adults, I've never seperated out the babies, so I'm sure a lot were lost on the way. I find that the the fish make their way down to the bottom pond away from the other fish (in the sleeper top box) to breed. Not sure why, but in frisky season I always find a couple of fishies down there with fry. Its a tough trip down there, similar to salmon spawning in reverse.

As far as water changes go, it needs regular topping up from evaporation once or twice a week. Possibly a few leaks here and there. So I just toss the garden hose in, I've never aged or conditioned the water and the fish never mind. They get fed flake food most days, I don't stick to a definate schedule as they have heaps of other goodies floating around. But again, left alone they do well.

I will try this year to hunt the eggs down to seperate, fingers crossed a lot more won't get eaten this year!

[Bren MacFish]

A well planted pond is definitely the way to go. You can just let nature feed the fry for you. And your's looks awesome! My backyard was a rubble pit when I moved in tho. Someone had pulled down a pile of sheds, and outhouses and left concrete pads and piping, nails and rubble basically. My pond is an old 1930s double washtub with the middle knocked out, buried a couple of feet down into the rubble planted around and cycled by a homemade trickle filter in a plant pot. Not big enough for nature to provide for tiny fish or hide them. So it is a case of rescue or perish. I think I'll need another washtub. My four big fish are about the limit of that pond's capabilities.

[Mishy]

Bren, our fish have started getting sexy already. We've had one spawn from the outside bathtubs and we have no idea who the parents are (not when you have 20+ adults). We just moved the 'oldest' fry (they're about 3 months old at the moment) into a 2ft deck tank and letting nature take its course with the baby bathtub. You're right, ignore and they grow much better. We didn't do a water change for about 3 months and was rewarded with minature goldfishes.

[Robbies Betta]

Sexy goldfish are the biggest pains they've demolished most plants in our pond, but as soon as I find the ellusive pink eggs, yoink, they're going into a tub We have a couple of the coomon goldies, some bronze ones and 2 white ones. One of the whites started as an orange with a white patch on it's head. Now there's just a small orange patch The Almighty Bruce, he's HUGE. I'd be scared if I were sitting down next to a tank and that onster of a fish came swimming past from no-where :balloons:

[Figure_8]

I'm definitely getting a pond happening once my 2 legged little ones are old enough. I've always wanted one with water lillies and heavily planted surrounds. :balloons:

[Bren MacFish]

I'm definitely getting a pond happening once my 2 legged little ones are old enough. I've always wanted one with water lillies and heavily planted surrounds.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Me too... but I want it where I can see it... and I can't dig down in my backyard here, so I'll have to move.

Yeah, it's always funny when you go out in the backyard and find the kids "fishing".

School holidays... dozens of them everywhere... okay, the last headcount revealed eight at least, it just feels like more, they keep growing. And eating. When's the govt babysitting service start back up?

[Mishy]

:blink: 8??? You have 8 kids?? :huh:

[Figure_8]

8? woohooo someone beats me! Can I ask the usual questions I get?.. do you have a tv? is your name Brady? Big families are awesome though .. good onya! :blink:

[Phil]

I have a big pond that really needs a clean out, and the waterlilies repotting, but i just havent been in the mood to get into the sludge yet this year. My goldfish have bred, i have only had one little one survive, the cutest little shubunkin, he got to about 4cm, then i didnt see him again so i gather he died . I havent cleaned or fed my fish in over a year and they just keep going :blink:

[lambo]

We've got 7 ponds with goldfish. We do nothing except the ocassional feed, and they always produce a spawn each year. We can normally go outside and here them in the pond doing there stuff

[Bren MacFish]

Phil, that just proves my shibunkin theory. Goldfish don't need much food in winter and summer up there would come with lots of mozzies. I've rigged up a gravel vac for my pond since it's concrete-based and not huge. The end of the hose is connected to a garden hose down the stormwater drain. It's one of those vacs you shake to get going. I just run that over the gravel every couple of weeks, top up, and there's nothing else to do except throw them food and pull leaves out. Mishy, I deny ownership of most of those kids. I have this horrible pied piper affliction where they all just keep following me around. There should only be two. The others just came to visit (they travel in packs you know, you can hear them howling in the distance sometimes). I'd like a big family... I just wouldn't like all the work that comes with it!

[Robbies Betta]

they travel in packs you know, you can hear them howling in the distance sometimes.

:lol:

So true

well here's sum pics of our goldie pond. just ur usualy pre-fab black pond thing, and then three lil pools as the "waterfall"

sadly I found the biggest fish, a bronze one (he was my sisters), outside in the plants. must've jumped out during their frolic and running around

But I went to the LFS with her and let her chose a new one and so here he is, Sunny in all his shining glory (he's in the QT tank right now )

and a better one of him

[Mpearce]

Very interesting coloured fishy, and love the planting you've got around the pond. Looks like you've had a bit of rain down there.

[Chuckie]

We can normally go outside and here them in the pond doing there stuff

For years we had a 20,000 L koi pond. Hearing/watching 10 or more 2' koi spawning at a time during the sexy season was amazing! Left nasty protein scum on the water though. I miss my pond and koi :lol:

[Robbies Betta]

Yeah nasty wet stuff from the sky (no sun ) , but it filled the pond up nicely tried talking my sister into the cutest looking shibunkin. It looked kinda koi coloured and kool :D

[Chuckie]

I saw some wet stuff falling from the sky a week or so ago, I had to ask my friend what it was!!! We need rain here SO badly.

[Bren MacFish]

That's an interesting shaped and coloured new fish. What did the fish shop say it was?

[Robbies Betta]

there were normal Nymphs and then it said Calico Nymph ($5 cheaper) so I asked the shop lady if he was a calico one, and she goes "eeerrm, ok, I guess I can give him to you as a calico" sweeet he's fantail and he's got the cutest black streeks on the tips of his tail :D

[Bren MacFish]

He looks like the fat-body parent that made him a nymph might have been a ryukin or something fairly exotic rather than a regular fantail. Just the way his back curves and the pointy face and the hang of his tail. Or maybe a veiltail...

[fuzzy_dragonfly]

8? woohooo someone beats me! 

Can I ask the usual questions I get?.. do you have a tv? is your name Brady? 

Big families are awesome though    .. good onya! 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Or quotes like:

Geeze you must have a big house

No we do not have a big house, we have a big car and big dreams to build a big house with a big fish tank and a big fish/duck pond with big fish . Someday.

On the topic of breeding goldfish, I don't really think you can stop them from breeding . All you need is one male and one female fish something to lay eggs on and away you go . Oh plus a spare tank and some fry food. Oh and I little experience in raising fry doesn't go astray either .

[Berryfriendly]

This is a great thread. One of my neighbours moved house yesterday and offered me her goldfish and plants if I went and scooped them out. I came home with 3 adult and about 15 babies. I am told the biggest one is almost 4 years old. Now I just need to work out where I am going to put them

I can keep the babies indisde but I would like to try and spawn the adults. What is the smallest size tank I should put them in to spawn? My pond is full of female bettas so unless I can convince my husband to build me another pond I will need to use a tank. I will try and get some pictures of my new beauties today.

[Callatya]

Probably a 4' would do the trick ;)

[Berryfriendly]

My lovely DH felt guilty looking at them all cramped up in a 2ft tank at lunch time and decided to build me another pond. Isn't he sweet. We spent the afternoon constructing it and I spent a couple of hours detangling and repotting some lillies for them. It was dark by the time I finished so I will have to get photos tomorrow.

[Robbies Betta]

well aren't u lucky fish can have that affect on someone. just looking at their bulgy eyes wud make anyone feel guilty, lol