General Chat

Good afternoon everyone
I've been on the hunt for my missing fish, to put you all in the picture i have a raised 175 gallon pond in my garden and i cant find a least some of my fish. I've been up to my shoulders in freezing water lifting plant baskets and over turned pots to see if they are hiding but no luck they have disappeared, they have been in the pond for over 3 year and up until recently they were all accounted for, cant say I've spotted any herons! do magpies or crows take fish?

Herons do.............as will some cats, my neighbours cat came home with a large Koi recently:(

crows do take fish

http://www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk/forums/british-birds/22906-do-crows-catch-fish.html

This is a useful link...............it looks as though you need to get some netting to protect the rest of your fish.

dont want the rest to go missing i think im going to have to put a net over the pond

you bet me to it Kitty

Kitty may have took them to cook lol

Eewwww...............that means gutting them *shudders*

I like fish, but prefer to have them all nicely cleaned first:))

lol

only about 6" long each 1 KingKeith so not very filling lol

Might have to drag my OH to the garden centre at the weekend to replace them but need to go in to the shed and dig out the netting first

OK so I did laugh. Really bad thing to do. But in this environment of so many searches I just wondered how we could advise on a search for missing fish. You lot have come up with some really good suggestions. My thoughts are about the same as well.


As you seem fairly certain that the fish have gone I suppose the next step will be to find out how. You would have to drain the whole pond, which would not be very helpful to the fish, in order to do a fish count.

Is your pond fed by a stream or other water source that may provide an avenue for escape. Do you have a neighbourhood cat who likes fish. I would imagine that some species of birds do take fish. You could put a piece of netting over the pond to stop their free lunches.

The other possibility you could consider is that person or persons unknown have visited and helped themselves.

Hi AuntySherlock
The pond is free standing raised above the ground and i do have a couple of crows that come down to dunk stale bread, they leave it in the water and come back when its soft (bright birds)
the water is very clear as i have a 3in1 pump so you see right to the bottom of the pond and i know 2 of the larger comets are missing and the biggest goldfish is also gone they are the ones that are easy to spot.
I've already moved the plant baskets etc already to make sure they weren't hiding or trapped behind not no luck so as ive not seen a heron i think my money is on the crows or the magpies

OK, That clarifies things a bit. Now let me tell you about crows. Oz type crows. Short story. We were on a camping trip up in the far north of South Australia. One day we left our camp site for a few hours to go fishing. When we returned it was to chaos and a horrible mess, and a small flock of very merry crows where finishing off their afternoon's work.

They had unravelled a whole roll of aluminium foil, a roll of paper towel, eaten a container of dog biscuits, eaten (I kid you not) a packet of soap powder. Also chewed up everything that was moveable in our camping area including all my clothes pegs.

The next afternoon we stayed home and watched while our feathered friends tried the same trick on another camp site about 300 metres away.

That's crows for you!! Put the netting over the pond.

Cats are also quite good a scooping fish out. Contrary to popular belief, they dont mind water one little bit and are good swimmers when it suits them.

I would say that's more likely thatn a crow or a magpie, although both will help themselves, it would be more likely in shallow water.

If you net the pond, cats can get entangled and drown. Has been known to happen.

Eldrick........at least the culprit might found out!!?

Bob

we have 3 fish in our pond that dont belong to us, our eldest cat charlie fetches them from somewhere. they're not yours are they, lol.

jean

Lucky you came clean, Kitty -- I was about to rat out your cat!

edit - oops -- that was the cat of Marion from Scotland I was thinking of!

http://www.genesreunited.co.uk/boards.asp?wci=thread&tk=1148347&px=1


AuntySherlock -- I wondered whether it was another case of a missing capital letter. ;)

Your question is causing some deep thought. Brain tired.
Missing capital letter, don't tell me you want more of them?

Aunty, Aunty -- mystery of the missing fish, mystery of the missing Fish ...

I was in TTF mode, and assumed it was a surname. ;)

Most TTF posters have keyboards that didn't come equipped with a shift key, an enter key or punctuation keys, you know!