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How To Care For Pond Goldfish Fry – Goldfish Fry Care Guide!

Garden ponds are becoming increasingly popular and one of the key features of garden ponds is goldfish with the majority of people keeping multiple goldfish in the same garden pond.

It doesn’t matter if your keep your goldfish in a garden pond or in an aquarium, anywhere you have multiple goldfish, fry and baby fish are sure to soon follow.

Due to this, we have noticed more and more people reaching out and asking about how they are able to take care of their pond goldfish fry.

Unlike in an aquarium where it is easier to see your goldfish fry as well as being able to drastically reduce the number of potential predators to them, live is much harder for any goldfish fry in your garden pond.

This is why we have decided to publish our own goldfish fry care guide in the hope that we are able to help as many of our readers as possible who are considering raising goldfish fry in their garden ponds.

Our hope is that we will be able to help as many of our readers as possible and drastically improve the survival rate of the goldfish fry in your garden pond and help them reach adulthood.

5 Tips For Raising Goldfish Fry

  1. Try to put your goldfish fry into their own aquarium until they are large enough to be added back to your pond to protect them from predators.
  2. If you do have to keep your goldfish fry in your pond get a cheap fish hatchery for the pond to keep your fry in.
  3. If you are not able to get a fish hatcher try to add some live submerged plants to your pond to provide cover for your goldfish fry to hide from predators.
  4. Feed your goldfish fry freshly hatched brine shrimp if possible but crushing fish flakes between your thumb and finger can be a decent alternative.
  5. Try not to readd your goldfish fry to your pond until they are between 1.5-2 inches long to prevent their parents and other goldfish from eating them.

Is It Safe To Keep Goldfish Fry In A Pond?

It is generally not considered safe to try and raise your goldfish fry in a pond due to the number of potential predators that will see them as food.

Other goldfish, amphibians, birds, bugs, and shrimp can all see your goldfish fry as an easy meal so it is usually better to move them out of the pond into a specialist tank if possible.

The majority of pond goldfish fry can easily be caught by scooping out of the pond with a net as they tend to stick to the sides of your pond or near any live plants or other cover.

Due to their tiny size, you are able to keep your goldfish fry in a cheap fish bowl until they grow to a larger size.

If you do choose to keep your goldfish fry in your pond then getting a cheap fish hatchery to add a protective barrier for your goldfish fry is highly recommended

It will help to protect the goldfish fry from potential predators while in your pond and adding some plants to the hatchery can also help to minimise stress and anxiety levels in the fry too.

How Do You Keep Goldfish Fry Alive In A Pond?

The odds are definitely stacked against you when you try to keep goldfish fry alive in a pond due to there being so many potential predators looking to make the goldfish fry their next meal.

If you do have to keep your goldfish fry in the pond then a fish hatchery is an excellent addition as they are only around $15 but add a physical barrier to protect your goldfish fry and drastically increase their odds of survival.

Due to there usually being so many goldfish fry per spawing, there is still a chance that a small number of the fry will survive in your pond without you offering any sort of intervention.

One of the quickest, easiest, and cheapest ways that you are able to keep goldfish fry alive in a pond is to add a few submerged pond plants such as Elodea Densa or Hornwort as they offer some great cover for your goldfish fry to hide and avoid predators.

The absolute best option is to remove the goldfish fry from the pond into a safe aquarium free from all predators but a cheap fish hatchery can be a good alternative.

It lets you keep the goldfish in your pond but creates a physical barrier against the majority of the predators who will try to eat your goldfish fry.

Do Goldfish Eat Their Fry?

Goldfish will eat their own eggs, fry, and babies even if they are their own children. It is more common for goldfish to eat goldfish eggs and goldfish fry than it is to eat the baby goldfish as they tend to get too large for the adult goldfish to eat them.

It is a very common mistake for people new to trying to raise goldfish fry in their ponds to presume that their goldfish fry will be fine if the only other fish in the pond are the parents of the fry.

The lineage of the fry is not factored in by the adult goldfish and they are all seen as a quick and easy meal.

If you have a garden pond with minimal cover for your goldfish fry to hide then there is a large chance that none of your goldfish fry will survive and that their parents will be responsible for eating a large number of them.

This is why we highly recommend that as a minimum, you add something like Elodea Densa or Hornwort to your garden pond if possible as it provides excellent cover for your goldfish fry.

Should You Remove Goldfish Fry From A Pond?

It is highly recommended that you try to remove as many goldfish fry from your pond as possible if you are trying to raise your goldfish fry to adult fish.

There are simply too many potential predators in the pond that will eat a huge number of your fry if you leave them in the pond.

You can pick up a cheap fish bowl for around $10-$15 to keep your goldfish fry in until they are larger.

If needed, you are able to keep your goldfish fry in anything in your home that will hold water and we have seen people use buckets, measuring jugs, pans, and vases to keep their goldfish fry in until they are larger.

The only thing that is important if that you create a safe environment that is free from all predators for your goldfish fry so the actual container than you choose to keep them in is not as important as some people think.

Just make sure that the container is clean and free from any potential contaminants or parasites prior to adding your goldfish fry to it.

The Best Food For Goldfish Fry!

The best food for goldfish fry is live baby brine shrimp with the fry usually really enjoying the brine shrimp and the majority of fry happily eating them.

You can try the freeze dried variant of brine shrimp but they tend not to have as high of an acceptance rate as the actual live baby brine shrimp for goldfish fry.

There are actually two ways you are able to use brine shrimp for your goldfish fry. The first and slightly better option is to use a brine shrimp hatchery to freshly hatch brine shrimp with brine shrimp egg packs being cheap and easy to use.

This is the better method of feeding your goldfish fry as the brine shrimp are freshly hatched and much smaller making them easier for your fry to eat.

The second method is to use live brine shrimp that you ordered online but by the time you have ordered them and they have been shipped to you, these brine shrimp can have grown to a size where it can be problematic for your fry to eat them until the fry grow in size.

Some people simply take some goldfish flakes and grind them up between their finger tips so they are much smaller than normal and offer their fry it as their primary food source until they are larger.

What To Feed Pond Goldfish Fry!

It can be difficult to specifically feed your goldfish fry if you do keep them in your garden pond as the other fish in the pond will often eat the food before your fry is able to get to it.

The majority of the time, the fry will be able to find food in a large enough pond themselves though due to there being plenty of aquatic bugs that they are able to eat.

If you do choose to pickup a cheap fish hatchery for your goldfish fry then feeding them while keeping them in your pond becomes much easier.

You are able to simply add live brine shrimp to the hatchery or grind up goldfish food flakes between your fingers and over the hatchery to feed them.

Some of the tiny insects in your pond water will also be able to swim into the fry hatchery providing your goldfish fry with a constant source of food that they are able to eat when they want too.

We have seen some people boil eggs and crumble the yolk into the pond as larger fish tend to ignore it while fry will eat it but around half of the fry will also ignore the egg yolk so brine shrimp or flakes are usually the best option.

Conclusion

That brings our article going over how you are able to care for pond goldfish fry to an end. We hope that you have found our article helpful and that we have been able to help you better understand how to protect your goldfish fry as well as what you should be feeding them. They are the two most common areas where we see people making mistakes time and time again when it comes to rasing goldfish fry so perfecting both areas is able to drastically improve survival rates of your fry.