I am considering building a nice garden pond. I like koi fish or gold
fish. But I also have a regular racoon visitor in my backyard, as well as
possums and others. I think goldfish would not last long, but if koi were
big enough could they be safe from the racoon? Thanks.

Larry

brief answer - no. raccoons will happily dine on any fish. that should not
keep you from having a pond however. it is easy to make your pond raccoon
safe and yet make it still usable for critters as a water source. after
loosing way too many fish I found the answer was to make the pond with the
fish in it with very steep sides. I'm guessing that my pond is about 2.5
feet deep and the sides go straight down. I then have an upper pond that
feeds into a stream the feeds into the fish pond. the upper pond works as a
veggie filter and the stream gives a water source for birds and mammals.

my pond now has many generations of goldfish and koi and I have not had a
raccoon incident in years. I have had kingfisher, heron, etc. think dinner
was being served. I dealt with this by putting the stackable plastic
storage crates/baskets upside down in the bottom of the pond (you have to
put a plant on them to hold them down and they have to have one side that is
shorter than the others for the fish to get in and out - that is why I say
stackable - they have the lower side). the fish swim into these to hide
from predators and I have lost very few if any since doing this.

go to ponds.rec if you can. there is a great many more posters and a great
deal of help. one of the things I really recommend to all people putting in
their first pond is build it as big as you can and be sure to include a
veggie filter. if you use a filter you have to clean on a daily, weekly or
even monthly basis you will find you pond less pleasant than you would other
wise. post at that site and ask people to share what mistakes they made and
how they would do things differently. it will help a lot.

good luck. the birds, raccoons, possums, mice, my cats and myself love our
pond. hope you venture in.

"Larry" wrote in message
...
I am considering building a nice garden pond. I like koi fish or gold
fish. But I also have a regular racoon visitor in my backyard, as well as
possums and others. I think goldfish would not last long, but if koi were
big enough could they be safe from the racoon? Thanks.

Larry