Well folks, fess up time, I did it, I'm guilty. That pond cleaning I was so proud of. Remember? it was Tuesday and KoKo posted the pictures for me and you've all been so nice with comments. Come Thursday and the fish decided it was time to spawn and of course all the plants and floating plants were gone. It was about a 4 hours spawn and feast but the worst was yet to be revealed. I squatted down to just check out the roots of a small water hyacinth to see if I could see any eggs and I spotted a newly hatched and free swimming fry. Yes, the goldfish had spawned before I cleaned the pond and I obviously dumped out on the lawn in the 50 gallons of water I discarded, dried out, killed in fresh chlorinated water, and threw in the compost pile untold numbers of goldfish fry. Yes, I'm the guilty party. I guess the moral to that story is I should have checked before I dumped. I did find a few fry on Friday swimming in the little bit of water that remained in the bottom of the swimming pool. So that's two spawnings lost. Maybe I'll get it right by the time the Orandas spawn. Question, I was looking at the long, commercial style, cotton mops at Lowes and wondering if they could be used as spawning mats for egg collection. I was thinking the next time I saw the fish spawning I could drop the mops in the pond, give the fish a while to lay eggs and then pull out the mops and put them in a hatching container with an airstone. Do you think it would work? I'd wash the mops a couple of times in plain water before using them.
Milo

Milo

don't be hard on yourself, most of them would have been fish food before they got a chance at life anyhow. You might get another spawning, and it could be soon. When I moved my fish around, and I did it three times last year, each time it triggered off another spawning. Actually they didn't spawn three times but four times last year.

This is what I would do if I were you (what I did last year). First I think that the mop idea is a good one, that is one thing I did not do. I fished the eggs out, took off lily pads covered with eggs, and got a lot of them out of the skimmer. Of course I only have about 15 fry (and that is probably an exageration but I don't know exact numbers in the pond) to show for my hard labor LOL. I put water from the pond in a wiskey barrel pond and that is where I put the eggs. I put cat tails and some water hycinths in also. As soon as the babies hatched I took them out and put them in a plastic bag floated them in my 50 gallon aquarium and that is where they stayed (well of course did turn them loose lol). I watched them grow, it was really cool. The thing you have to remember with the eggs when you take them out, be sure you put them in a container with the same water from the pond. You want that water to be the same temp and everything so you'll want to transfer the eggs the same day you fill your container with pond water. The eggs are sensitive to the water change and you could kill most of them if the temp is just a little off. If you look at your eggs you can also tell which ones have been fertilized and which ones haven't. The white ones are no good, opaque are fertile.

Here is a site on koi spawning you may find interesting, I know I posted it on here before buy you may not have seen it. I think it will help you with your spawning.

http://www.koi-uk.co.uk/experimental_spawning.htm

Good luck and I hope you get a bunch of nice looking fish.

Also, the reason I took the fry out of the barrel was because the water temp kept rising and I was afraid they would literaly fry! or maybe boil. They did have plenty of food in there already to eat as they eat algae. When I brought them in I bought fry food and they did very well on it. You have to feed them at least THREE times a day. You need to make sure that their bellies are full all time in order for them to grow faster. It's way cool to watch because you can see when their bellies are full.

The fry will hatch withen two to three days.
Scott

Well, Milo, welcome to the club! It happens to a lot of us thinking there is nothing left and start doing the cleaning, when out of the blue - oops, what was that swimming something?!
My hubby got a green "spawning mat" from Aquatic ecosystems this year, its a long, green, stringy kind of mop, about 3 or 4 ft long, and has that in one of the koi ponds right now. Now, all we need are a few willing koi!

Anderea

LOL they are all willing, it's just a matter of time. I hate spawning, in my opinion is the worst time of year. Of course I have a lot of males and only three females. I didn't know their sex when I got them! Last year I thought that the males were going to kill my largest female the poor thing layed at the bottom of the pond for a couple of days.

Scott

don't feel so bad Milo
we all make these mistakes
i lost some of my fry in my very own hands
when i was trying to do i water change
i netted all the fry-BAD MISTAKE
turns out they were too delicate and they must off
been squashed by the net because some of them weren't moving
after i put them back
not very nice but what can you do but learn from your own mistakes

don't worry it happend to all of us
that had fry.
I ended up putting some guppy frys down the toilet
and noticed them right away when i was
going to flush
but i saved the poor things.

I murdered two lots of angel fish fry a few years back ( First time I let them get to the stage where they were swimming away from their birth leaf and mum had little control of them anymore, what I forgot was that when I put my arm in and pull it out it creates a vaccuum so all the fish that mum had guarded off her babies went in for the kill and ate them all in about a minute. The second time I put them in a breeding box in the tank and it was heartbreaking watching mum fish throw herself on top of it trying to get her little ones which died anyway!! wish all fish were as protective of their fry as angels are!