Yesterday while I was mowing I happened to look down in our big pond and saw a flash of orange. Now I thought this was weird since the only thing in this pond is bullfrogs.
Well, sure enough we cleared away some water lettuce and there they were! Bunches of them! I'm trying not to be too excited though. I think the frogs will probably eat them and I have no way to catch them and move them. They would go right through the net I have and there are big rocks in the bottom of this pond. It's just that this is the first time in 3 years I have even seen any fry!
We moved some of the water lettuce from the fishpond to this one a couple of months ago and apparently there were eggs. It's also special since I just lost 3 of my fish from the fishpond so it seemed like a gift just to see these babies.
They must have hatched right when we moved the plants since I saw at least 2 gold ones and one that looked to be a shubunkin.
I am not feeding or anything since I just spotted them yesterday so I guess it's going to be a survive or not situation. This pond does not get cleaned or anything, but does have a mechanical filter with a fountain , biofilter with about a 3" drop , plus a waterfall with a stream. So there is plenty of air.
I don't know what fish eat "in the wild" but hopefully we have it in the pond and at least one or two might survive. It was just incredible and I had to share this!

That's great!
I get fry in my pond every year, the first summer I didn't feed them because I didn't see them. They survived and grew!
Now I feed them Powdered Baby Food and Flakes.
I hope you can get some pics of them. Shubunkin fry, Yeah!

I finally got a picture! I zoomed it so the fry you can see really well are about 2-21/2"
I think the bottom right is the shubunkin but he was hard to see.

How exciting!! Surprise fry and those 2 look big and healthy already

grats on the fry! nice to see them grow:)

Yes, these look good and strong!

What size should they be before I can move them in with the other goldfish? I'm not sure if we will keep a pump running in this pond over the winter (we didn't last year) since we normally only have frogs in it. I can see already that they will be a nightmare to catch! They dart around pretty fast, which is probably why they haven't been eaten already !
I just have no idea since this is our first fry

Last year we emptied the pond in the fall and caught all 18 fry and put them in a tank. This year the fry are too many, we will try to overwinter them with a pump and de-icer.