Sighs...

[black angel]

I live in Scotland..north east scotland and this winter has seen the lowest temperatures for many many years...-15 wasnt unusual some nights and for a week or more barely rose above 0

I worried about my fish, i wanted to do something to help them but couldnt..the pond had 4 inches of ice and maybe a foot of snow.

Couple days ago the ice has melted from the edges and still an inch in the centre...its deepest point is four and a half feet and to be honest our winters have all been mild, until now.

I found a dead koi and female shubunkin yesterday and i can see bodies under the ice that i cant reach..I fear ive lost my entire pond stock, some of them ive had 3 years.

Ive been tols oh you can restock in the spring, thats true..i have thankfully 6 babies that were taken in the autumn in a tank for release back in..but i feel sad that these beautiful animals didnt make it..

Im hoping against hope that my sarassa and fantail big bertha as shes affectionately known made it through, but i know if my koi didnt make it nothing much else will...

I have
2 fantails
1 sarassa
2 shubunkins
2 ghost koi
2 juveniles from 2 years ago pond bred
babies from last years spawns

found so far
1 koi
1 shubunkin
1 baby

 

[mark4785]

Hi,

I'm sorry to hear about what has happened within your pond. If you are able to get to the remaining fish I would personally transfer them to a temporary tank and slowly warm the water up. The temperature over the next coming days is going to decrease for the north of England and Scotland with a high risk of more snow I believe; strong westerly wind coming from Russia which was the case over the snowy winter.

If you can't move them out try and scrape away as much snow as possible so the sunlight can reach the fish and raise the temperature to something more acceptable.

Again, sorry to hear of your loss.

Mark.

 

[black angel]

thanks mark but i have nothing anywhere near large enough to store the fish. The largest fantail i tried to house late autumn in a 50 gallon but the water fouled after a few hours...filtration just isnt strong enough and i couldnt afford to get something that could do the job and then theres making the tank too fast for her. Shes around 8 inches in length and just as round.
No snow left here now so theyre going to have to survive best they can if theres anything left.

Hubby is going to try and make a tarpaulin cover though

 

[Tolak]

With the recent freeze down in Florida they have been setting up a sort of mini plastic greenhouse over ponds using clear plastic. If your hubby is buying materials go with clear, and leave some space between the plastic & water, the air will heat up & is a great insulator.

 

[fishnovice]

Really sorry to her about your loss. Must be dreadful to watch helplessly as the temperature reaches a record low. Looks like we're in for a record cold winter -even ponds in Florida froze for the first time in living memory and killed millions of tropical fish in fish farms.Here in London where it rarely snows, a bucket I left outside had ice 2inches thick with an inch of snow on top.

Try to bring that fancy goldie and any smallish survivors indoors.You don't need an aquarium in an emergency -be creative.I brought my young golden rudd indoors and drained their tank when I heard the weather forecast. They are currently living in 2 huge plastic crates, the kind you get from Poundstretcher and DIY stores for around £9.99. You could keep your 8in goldfish in one,or get a plastic water butt or barrel used for beer making. For larger fish, maybe those huge water tanks plumbers merchants have (the kind installed in the attic for your water supply).Don't worry too much about filters -my rudd are eating very litle even indoors at 15degrees so there is much less waste. They have been indoors for a month now and manging OK with 98% weekly water changes so i'm keeping them in till March

If you haven't got a tarpaulin, try covering the pond with double thickness black binbags, Just roll them out over the ice to keep snow off and absorb heat from the sun.Good luck to you and your fish.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

I am so sorry to hear your loss Black Angel!

During the snow over here down in Somerset the temperatures dropped to -14, but thankfully all my fish have survived. I know a lot of people don't advise it, but i have kept my filtration system running throughout the winter (i have always thought that the cycle a pond first thing in spring would be very stressful for fish that have just come out of hibernation). I guess the extra minus degree was just too much for your fish to cope with.

But are you certain that other factors like a build up of dead organic material in the pond weren't to play in this matter? I know you know a huge amount on goldfish, but just to make sure. Have you been feeding the fish at all during the winter, and if so, what?

At least you have your fry though. TBH though i think the goldfish rather than the koi would be most likely to make it, as i have always read that goldfish are very tolerant of freezing temperatures (although i haven't read so much of the same on koi). The most important thing right now is to remove the dead fish, can you slip a net under the ice to fish out the other dead fish?

I would be apprehensive about bringing the surviving fish indoors- now the weather is warming up, they may actually fair better in the pond, as the tank room temperature difference indoors will be considerably different than the pond temperature outdoors, it may cause them more stress moving them indoors. As long as you remove the dead fish from the pond ASAP, the water quality should remain good. When large fish die a huge amount of slime coat can be shed from the dead fishes body as it starts to slowly decompose, which can feed a large amount of bad bacteria in the pond.

 

[black angel]

thanks for the replies and suggestions much appreciated..at one point i talked about filling the pond in and selling off the remaining fish..but no, i'll keep going.

so far ive pulled out

2 koi
my sarassa
bertha my huge fantail..i measured her ..length not including her stubby tail was 7 inches and she had an 8 inch girth..
female shubunkin
6 various baby fish from last summers spawn and i still have 6 in the house that we took last autumn


swimming around i saw my other fantail and my other shubunkin
but no sign yet of my two pond spawned babies from 3 years ago.

the pond doesnt smell too good as the ice has been really hard to break up to reach the centre and we only just today managed to get most of the ice out, some bits still 2 inches thick.

tried to restart the pumps but the electrics are wet somewhere so will have to wait.. i couldnt risk the pond freezing with the filters on and water just going out the pond. There is quite a bit of vegetation in the pond so maybe oxygen starvation and the fact i couldnt for a few days even get close to keeping the pond from totally freezing over. All the dead ones weve seen are out. next year im going to keep both filters on and hope we dont get another winter like that again. though we arent out of this winter and still got february to go im hoping it doesnt get that low again.
but priority now is to get those filters back up and running..but do i attempt a water change of around 70% or wait until spring?

as for covering the pond, hubby is still deciding what to do, i like the idea of something like a large greenhouse type structure just to keep the worst off but will see.

I havent fed the fish since start of december when they all stopped eating..water was too cold for them, they went last year ok with no food for 2 months and before the winter they were fed wheatgerm

thanks all.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

If there is a fair amount of dead vegetation in the pond from the pond plants dying off in the winter, then this could has caused toxic gases from the decaying process to build up under the ice and foul the water quality. I don't think koi are as hardy as goldfish when it comes to very cold freezing temperatures, so its also possible that one of the koi's died and caused the water quality to foul, causing a chain reaction which started to kill off the other fish.

If the water doesn't smell good then it probably does have water quality issues, so my advice would be to put some pond dechlorinator in the pond and to run a hose in it until it overflows for a while, to help clear the water of any excess proteins fouling it etc. As long as the goldfish have clean water then they should be able to get through it .

I do think this was a super freak cold winter, i have never experienced anything like it in my lifetime, so hopefully we shouldn't get another one anytime soon .
As for other potentially cold winters though, maybe you could get some sort of swimming pool cover to go over the pond? It may help insulate it and it may be easier to do?