I have a backyard pond, small, ornamental – you know, just one of those smallish black plastic pools set in the ground and ornamented with rocks and grass. It’s got a bucket of water lily and a couple of buckets of water grass, all sunk in the bottom. It’s a still pond, no water feature, and until two days ago it had about 15 gold fish in it. These gold fish were in the pond for at least a year; I bought the house a year ago and they were already in it. I would go out every day and toss some fish flakes in, but that was the total extent of my fish maintenace.
Two nights ago, the fish disappeared. They aren’t floating dead on top of the water, nor are they coming to eat the food – they’re just gone, as far as I can tell.
Create lots of hidey-holes deep enough to be out of range for a raccoon’s grasping little hands. Stacked rocks, overhanging edges, even those false little logs from the pet store will give your fishies refuge when hungry wildlife comes calling.
Raccoons will wade, but do not like to swim. If you can dig a deeper pool and use a liner that would be good. They raided my 2 1/2 foot pool until I moved the pots into the middle, so they could not use them as stepping stones.
The water gardening businesses sell a black net to protect the pool, which is the same one as you can buy for at WalMart used to cover fruit trees. I’ve had birds kill a brightly colored fish through the net, and black snakes get stuck in the netting.
I’m not sure where you live, but as Struan suggested, a heron could easily wipe out all of the fish in a small pond such as yours. I know several people who have had a similar problem. I would expect that a raccoon would have missed a few.
I am in the middle of a war with my raccoons. They have been trashing my bird feeders and being generally obnoxious. There are too many also, and when that happens, rabies tends to gradually decimate the population. I killed 2 young, rabid raccoons earlier this year, and I have been trapping and relocating since then.
Was thinking about this, and I think I’ll change my vote to heron. Mainly because I’ve seen herons swallow fish whole, whereas is suspect a coon might leave the odd bone or fin.
Until you make changes of netting, sufficient depth, etc., be sure you buy cheap “feeder” goldfish from your local pet store.
We put a piece of terra cotta drain tile in the bottom of the pond and that has worked well. It’s maybe 12-18" long, but that’s long enough and heavy enough to deter even a really determined raccoon.
My vote is heron, but maybe that is because I’ve lost so many fish in my pond to heron that I despise the buggers. Not much more discouraging than having eight 10 inch beautiful koi disappear in one day (and I know it was heron because one fish survived for awhile with a huge vertical cut on both sides of his body).
Your pond though is shallow enough that raccoons could be the culprit.
This summer I’ve bought and installed a water scarecrow (motion sensing sprinker). Works fine so far. I didn’t want to put a net over the pond because it sort of ruins the natural effect.
This is true, although a black net against a dark bottomed pool is less intrusive. I believe one is supposed to float it on the surface, although I have not.
