On Sun, 11 Feb 2007 00:36:48 +0000, Gill Passman
wrote:

I currently have a small, modest water feature in the one part of my
garden not overgrown by trees or the need to maintain a lawn for the
kiddies to play in.....Because of the way that the drainage is dealt
with by the house it is one of the few areas where I can dig deep enough
to get below the frost line......

Right now it has a small water feature - a reservoir that goes up an
artificial hill (the garden is flat) and then comes back down again and
feeds up again etc. etc......the reservoir at the bottom is around 2 ft
6" deep.....the whole thing is pretty close to the house....

We've had some severe weather recently for this part of the UK.....so I
decided to find out how frozen the reservoir had got....OK it is covered
by a grill with rocks that will give some degree of protection.....the
ice was less than 1/8 inch thick.....now could I risk extending this
with a shallower pond and using this as my maximum depth (as it is
already dug out)?.....or should I be adding a bit more for
comfort?.....If my max depth is maybe 3 foot in this area (which would
be around 18" circumfrance (sp)) would this give sufficient protection
for goldfish (not Koi) to be able to over winter without any loss?

TIA
Gill

Absolutely. My 2 foot deep lily pond has done well this winter with a 100
watt pond heater and air bubbler.... okay, I have checked to see if any of
the moor fry have survived out there. I do know the coldest the temp it got
was about 35F and that was some distance from the heater. It did freeze
over, but I assume not where the heater and bubbler are. I keep shade cloth
over it to keep out any wind blown debris. I have a wireless thermometer in
it, and can track the temp from inside the house. This was an exceptionally
cold winter for us, weeks below freezing at times with no snow cover.

Shubunkins and wakings would do wonderfully. In a perfect world, where I
could have a bigger pond for my koi, my koi ponds would become ponds for
such goldfish. ~ jan