What is your water temperature?

I don't believe you can starve 11 goldfish in a 1000 gallon pond with
a few plants if you don't feed them at all. However, I like feeding
mine and they continue to grow a little during the winter. Check the
water temperature before feeding. Fish have more difficulty
digesting high protein foods in cold water.

I feed mine wheat germ (Spring and Winter feed.) when the water
temperature gets below 50 or so and they slow down on the amount of
food they eat. They continue to eat this food until the water
temperature gets a bit below 40 and they line up on the bottom and
don't eat until the water warms again, which for me is usually only a
few days. Zone 8 Georgia.

Regards,

Hal


On Sun, 07 Dec 2003 12:20:38 -0800, William Oertell
wrote:

Hi all. I just found this newsgroup, and being the owner of a
relatively new pond, look forward to participating in it for awhile.
My question, we have a 1,000 gal pond with about 11 goldfish in it.
(We stocked 12 but one didn't make the transition). We live in
Roseville, which is just outside Sacramento, CA. It gets into the 100's
in the summer and down to the 40's in the winter, with a few nights in
the 30's. Should we feed the fish once-in-awhile or let them eat
whatever floats into the pond? I'm concerned that fish food might
promote algae, which during the cool winter is an ongoing problem, but
I'm also concerned that the fish may not find enough to eat, too.
FWIW, the equipment is from Aquascapes and I regularly spike the pond
with the algae eating bacteria they sell. I'm thinking of buying their
liquid, as opposed to powder, bacteria. It's more quickly acting than
the powder.
Thanks!

Bill