The Best Way To Breed Goldfish In Your Backyard Fish Pond
Originally bred as a food source by the ancient Chinese, the goldfish was quite literally discovered by mistake. Today the commercial breeding of goldfish is big business and popular world wide as we humans seek to add attraction to our backyard fish pond and indoor aquariums.
The goldfish is a relation of the carp family and its breeding and spawning behaviour is not unlike that of its large cousins. Its strategy has been a major success and worked for centuries.
Goldfish are sociable creatures and live in small shoals, happily swimming around. When goldfish reach maturity they will spawn spontaneously with the other members of the shoal.
Goldfish Are Terrible Parents...
Once they have spawned they don't look after the eggs or young. Instead these cannibalistic fish will eat their own eggs, a mates eggs or the eggs of other shoal members. Even the surviving fry that have hatched from the eggs have a perilous time ahead of them if they are to become adult goldfish. Goldfish along with other pond fish including Koi, roach, sterlets etc will readily eat the fry given half a chance.
Mother nature in her curious way has ensured the survival of the species by ensuring that in true carp style a female goldfish releases thousands of eggs.
Fortunately despite such an uphill struggle for the newborn goldfish a backyard fish pond is capable of producing a decent number of goldfish that will survive to adult hood.
How to breed goldfish in Your Backyard Fish Pond...
Breeding goldfish in your fish pond is relatively simple if you provide the following basic prerequisites...
- Sexually Mature Goldfish - The variety or quality of goldfish is not too important as different varieties of goldfish will happily spawn with each other. A sexually mature goldfish will be at least 2 years old and measure between 6 to 8 inches in length. It is advisable for male goldfish to outnumber female gold fish. Males can be sexed by their sleeker bodies and longer fancier fins. Female goldfish tend to be plumper and more rounded, particularly as summer approaches.
- Suitable Backyard Fish Pond - When it comes to spawning only healthy and goldfish that have been well fed are likely to spawn. It is important therefore to ensure that you feed a nutritious Goldfish Food. The pond water quality will need to be good and you will need adequate Biological Filtration.
- Suitable Number of Aquatic Plants - A densely packed area of pond plants will significantly improve the chances of the small goldfish fry surviving the first few perilous months. The densely planted area acts as a hiding place for the small goldfish fry.
How Do Goldfish Breed In Your Backyard Fish Pond? ...
Breeding isn't a gentle act in the goldfish world. In fact the rough nature of the male activity will often leave the female goldfish with severe exhaustion or bodily damage.
Female goldfish when ready to spawn release pheromones into the pond water. The male goldfish are unable to resist and will start to chase and collide into any female goldfish (whether carrying eggs or not) in an attempt to get her to release her many thousands of tiny eggs.
As the female releases the eggs they are fertilised by the sperm of the chasing males. These tiny adhesive clear eggs will stick to any available hard surface within the pond including pond plants, pipe work, pond walls, pond pumps etc.
Although fry should be fed a prepared fry diet, the densely planted areas of aquatic pond plants will supply tiny food particles for the fry to feed on.
For many pond keepers, it is the appearance of little olive brown goldfish fry in the warmer weedy margins that provides proof of a successful spawning. You may wonder which of your brightly coloured goldfish have produced these brown, rather dull off spring? It could be any of the goldfish to be honest as the dull colouring is the way goldfish fry start out.
Goldfish only develop their wonderful colouration as they start to mature into fingerlings over the subsequent few weeks. The dull initial colour acts as an excellent camouflage as well as hinting back to the goldfishes ancient ancestry.
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