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Help! Dead fish


valerie

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Could some one explain too me what has happened .

 

My son caught 7 roach last autum and put them in our pond 15X5 M size, depth : very shallow to 2 meters deep.

Yesterday we found 4 dead. Two frozen and the other two on their side but not frozen. They had grown substantially in the year look very healthey and were all in the order of 1lb in weight.

 

We have had no rain fall this Autume , the water level has droped and we have had three hard frosts minus 7 for three days. No running water enters the pond.

 

What has happened?

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Could some one explain too me what has happened .

 

My son caught 7 roach last autum and put them in our pond 15X5 M size, depth : very shallow to 2 meters deep.

Yesterday we found 4 dead. Two frozen and the other two on their side but not frozen. They had grown substantially in the year look very healthey and were all in the order of 1lb in weight.

 

We have had no rain fall this Autume , the water level has droped and we have had three hard frosts minus 7 for three days. No running water enters the pond.

 

What has happened?

 

Hi valerie, and welcome to AN.

 

I'm no expert on fish keeping but if you can answer a few questions then someone might be able to help.

 

How far has the water level dropped?

Have you added anything to the pond recently, fish, weed etc?

Has there been any spraying in the area?

What other fish are there in the pond?

Have you got a pump and aerator in the pond?

 

I'll put a link from the 'Fish Keeping' forum to your post, they will be able to help, I'm sure.

 

John.

Angling is more than just catching fish, if it wasn't it would just be called 'catching'......... John

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Hi

Difficult to know what has happened without the full facts. But for a start a mild rebuke please. The taking of coarse fish and putting into a pond or aquarium is bad practise and really not to be encouraged. The wild roach and other coarse fish have not been bred for keeping as such, they are less tolerant to being kept in confined spaces. However goldfish koi and the like are so its always better to stock with these sort of fish.

As far as the roach deaths are concerned then a lack of oxygen could be the problem, but starvation could be a reason as well. Wild fish are dependent on taking natural food such as bloodworm etc and are therefore difficult to sustain in captivity.

Sorry for the 'lecture' but I hope you will take it as it is meant, and please continue to post on here, always good to talk about anything at all.

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Hi Valerie, and welcome to AN !!

 

I tend to agree with what Rabbit says, the taking of "wild" fish to put in your pond is not really a good idea all round.

 

You say that you have had some considerable frosts .. has the pond surface frozen over during this time ? If so then oxegen starvation is the most likely cause of your fish deaths.

 

You have to keep a hole in the ice for oxegen to get into the water. An old pondkeepers trick is to float a soft rubber ball on the water, this keeps moving around and flexing to allow the oxegen in. If you have running water going into your pond, or an air pump installed, that that will do the same trick.

 

Post any further questions on the "Fish and Pond keepers" forum for good replies. :thumbs:

 

Wiggly. :rolleyes:

The Older I get .. The better I was.

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That is rather a largish pond to suffer oxygen starvation unless it has been frozen solid for a while, normally oxygen problems occur during the summer when the pump is not working for example. When the temperature is low the fish start going into a semi sleep anyway, again using less oxygen. Any sign of fishy problems, fungus, finn rot, growth's. The other thing could be the actuall temperature drop it's self.

Free to choose apart from the ones where the trust poked their nose in. Common eel. tope. Bass and sea bream. All restricted.


New for 2016 TAT are the main instigators for the demise of the u k bass charter boat industry, where they went screaming off to parliament and for the first time assisting so called angling gurus set up bass take bans with the e u using rubbish exaggerated info collected by ices from anglers, they must be very proud.

Upgrade, the door has been closed with regards to anglers being linked to the e u superstate and the failed c f p. So TAT will no longer need to pay monies to the EAA anymore as that org is no longer relevant to the u k . Goodbye to the europeon anglers alliance and pathetic restrictions from the e u.

Angling is better than politics, ban politics from angling.

Consumer of bass. where is the evidence that the u k bass stock need angling trust protection. Why won't you work with your peers instead of castigating them. They have the answer.

Recipie's for mullet stew more than welcomed.

Angling sanitation trust and kent and sussex sea anglers org delete's and blocks rsa's alternative opinion on their face book site. Although they claim to rep all.

new for 2014. where is the evidence that the south coast bream stock need the angling trust? Your campaign has no evidence. Why won't you work with your peers, the inshore under tens? As opposed to alienating them? Angling trust failed big time re bait digging, even fish legal attempted to intervene and failed, all for what, nothing.

Looks like the sea angling reps have been coerced by the ifca's to compose sea angling strategy's that the ifca's at some stage will look at drafting into legislation to manage the rsa, because they like wasting tax payers money. That's without asking the rsa btw. You know who you are..

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if the pond is 2 metres deep ie 6 foot the cause will not be the ice. 6 foot of depth is loads by the standards of ponds and easily enough for any fish. Many huge lakes aren't even that deep and sustain fish of enormous sizes. starvation will not be the reason as the deaths would not all have occured at similar times but would be spread and with a pond of such a size starvation is unlikely. it is possible that malnutrition contributed making them weak if the pond was bare of weeds. such an enourmous pond of 5 metres by 15 should easily have sustained them. disease and poisoning are possible. Some chemicals such as wd40 even in minute quantities can poison whole lakes. they may have been struggling to survive and then somefactor such as the cold finished them off but were they healthy that wouldn't have occured. they most likely died and then were frozen when floating on the surface. the fact that they got frozen in the ice as it formed on the surface meant they were dead on the surface allready and that it wasn't low oxygen levels caused by the ice. Issues with oxgen levels won't have caused it as a pond of that size and when at this time of year when the water is cool would easilt be high enough unless chemical imbalances in the water or severe eutrofication had occured ie you have tons of algae or unless you have a surface covered by duckweed. to determine the cause check water ph ect if you really care inspecpt the dead fish for signs of disease such as any unusal growths. it sounds to me like water quality issues or possible but less likely ( as such a fish kills are rare ) disease. They may have been diseased especially if they were from a river ( rather than a carefully maintained fishing lake ). unless the water is of poor quaity you probably won't find out the reason. theere is no real problem having roach in a pond especially one of that size although taking them alive from a river/lake probably should have only been done with enviroment agency permission but thats a law no kid really cares about and isn't really enforced other than by the fishery ( they could get cross at the theft of their stock ).

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if the pond is 2 metres deep ie 6 foot the cause will not be the ice. 6 foot of depth is loads by the standards of ponds and easily enough for any fish.

 

Probably quite true in England (and this topic is about an English water) but just for clarity, a pond with no fresh water inlet and covered with ice and then snow so that no sunlight penetrates will become too oxygen poor to support fish after a time.

 

This is one cause of the horrible mossy problems in the northern US midwest (Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota) and central Canada where they have ice /w snow covering constantly for months each winter. Millions of shallow lakes caused when glaciers moved south have no fish to eat the larva so it is a perfect breeding ground for them.

" My choices in life were either to be a piano player in a whore house or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference!" - Harry Truman, 33rd US President

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Some chemicals such as wd40 even in minute quantities can poison whole lakes.

Really? WD40 is used by some anglers as a fish attractor. Do you have any info as how much parts per million etc would be needed to poison a lake?

Edited by Rabbit
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Some chemicals such as wd40 even in minute quantities can poison whole lakes.

Really? WD40 is used by some anglers as a fish attractor. Do you have any info as how much parts per million etc would be needed to poison a lake?

 

Here you go Neil, the spec's for WD40

 

http://www.dek.com/data/wd-40.pdf

 

 

John.

Angling is more than just catching fish, if it wasn't it would just be called 'catching'......... John

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