"birdman" wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi everyone, I'm new to this newsgroup. My name is Dan, and I live in
Maine.
This spring when my pond finally thawed, I found all my fish dead.
(goldfish)
here were 8 second year fish, about 5", and about 40 small first year
fish. (I had actually taken out at least 50 last fall).
The pond is about 1000 - 1500 gallons, and about 30" deep. Last winter
we had no snow and very cold temps all winter, so it surely froze to
the bottom, but 8 of my 15 fish came through fine.

This winter we had a lot of snow cover, so it couldn't possibly have
been any worse than last winter, yet all the fish died.

My only thought is that the pond didn't freeze to the bottom, so the
fish stayed somewhat active, and cosequently depleted the oxygen, or
starved. But that's just a guess.
Any thought on the matter?

Did you have a airhole open all winter? How late into the season did you
feed? That is a lot more fish in the second year as compared to the first
which means more need for oxygen. It is highly unlikely that it froze to
the bottom and you fish survived. It could have frozen all to the bottom
this year but generally snow insulates and it didn't freeze the previous
year to the bottom then it didn't this year... My guess is that the
increase in fish load was too much.