A few days ago, I wrote about preparing the winter tank for the pond fish, this post is about getting the fish out of the pond and into the tank.
This is the pond in the front yard.
As I wrote about in the last post about this, I used water from the pond to fill the tank in the greenhouse. It's the water that the fish have been in all summer and fall, so it's best to use it for the winter tank. Also, I have to pump the pond out in order to be able to catch the fish. It's almost impossible to catch the fish with a net when the pond has enough water for them to escape from the net. I use my sump pump for this, it gets the job done pretty well. I have a 5 gallon bucket that has the bottom removed and a screen about 2 inches up from the bottom edge of the bucket that I use for pumping water if there's stuff in the water, in this case leaves. The screen keeps the sump pump from clogging up.
When I had the winter tank filled, I started pumping the rest of the water out into the street, the storm drain takes care of it there. I had to pump it down to about 6-8 inches in the bottom to be able to catch the fish. Of course, the bottom of the pond is full of dead leaves from the trees.
I pretty much had to scoop up leaves with the fish to catch them, they were trying to hide in the leaves. I also found out that our resident frog is still in the pond. It was buried in the leaves when I was scooping them out. I put it back into the pond to be able to hibernate for the winter.
I was catching the fish one at a time and bringing them to the tank in the net.
I ended up with 8 pond fish in the tank for the winter. The water is cold enough in the tank in the greenhouse that their metabolism slows way down and they stop eating for the most part. They just basically drift around in the bottom of the tank with very little movement until the water warms up again.
Sometime in the next couple of weeks, I need to insulate the rest of the tank so that I can heat it a bit to keep it from freezing when it gets cold for the winter. Our local temperatures are on the downward slide now and we'll probably start getting days around or below freezing in the next couple of weeks. I'm going to have to go to the big box store and buy another sheet of foam insulation board so that I can finish it up. I also have to make a cover for the top of the tank, with enough space under it for a clamp lamp to provide light for the fish and heat for the water. I've done this in the past with success, and it's less expensive than a stock tank heater.
Well, that's all I have for this post, I hope you found it interesting!
Thanks for stopping by my page to check out my post, eh!
