Several years ago my mother and I decided to construct a small pond in my back yard. The result was lovely, and so we decided – just for the heck of it – to buy a half a dozen cheap goldfish and put them in there to see what happened. Well, the goldfish thrived during that first year. They grew to a decent size, and so we took them in over the winter – we live in New Hampshire and the pond is not that deep – and put them back in the pond the next spring.
This plan worked out just fine. The goldfish did not grow much over the winter, since they were in the fish tank which is much smaller than the backyard pond, but once they were back in the pond they got even bigger! They were a lot of fun to watch, and all was well with the world.
Then we noticed that one of the goldfish was getting bullied. The other fish were chasing it around the pond and generally picking on it. We considered removing it from the pond, but then decided to let nature take its course and just see what happened. I do not mean to sound cruel, but these fish were getting pretty big, and we did have to keep them over the winter. Sure enough, the bullying stopped and all six fish seemed fine.
Then one day I was weeding near the pond and I noticed that there were some minnows swimming around the pond. I thought, “Oh, would you look at that! Minnows!”. Then it occurred to me that this is a manmade pond with no connection whatsoever to another water source. Where in the heck would minnows come from?
So it turns out that the one goldfish was not being ‘bullied’. They were mating, and had managed to reproduce. The good news was that I only saw three little babies. Until about an hour later, when I saw a few more. And then a few more. There are lots of places to hide in this pond, and by the time they had grown enough to see them all, we found eighteen babies!
Turns out that people spend hundreds of dollars trying to get their goldfish to reproduce. There are all sorts of methods listed on the internet to encourage reproduction of goldfish. The true trick to goldfish reproduction? Throw a half dozen cheapy goldfish into a large body of water, pay no attention to them other than to feed them once in a while, bemoan the lack of space for winter storage of these fish, and voila! Lots of baby goldfish.
Long story short, we had fish tanks all over the house to store these darned fish over the winter. Then we had a stray cat find its way into the yard, and it cleaned out all of the bigger fish. But not to worry! The next year the new batch reproduced! We have goldfish out the wazoo!
