They just seem to show up. LOL Goldfish are gray at first then turn orange. They can get in ponds from plants. Have you got any new plants not long ago?

Yeah I would guess he was a goldfish (or carp) too. The only plants I got this year came thru the mail in damp newspaper and were treated for a week for parasites, any fish would have died on the way, plus I would have seen it when I put them in THE OTHER POND. No way it got carried over in the roots.

My only real guess is a bird coughed him up when it was bathing in the rock waterfall. Some of the rain catch basins by me may still have carp (they did when I was a kid).

Bird coughed him up or dropped him there is the only plausible explanation I can think of.

Maybe they chose to migrate! Very pretty pond. What are those tall grasses on either side? Do you ever move plants from one pond to the other? If so maybe that's how the fish ended up in the fishless pond. They just hung on for dear life when you were moving plants??

LOL! I can promise those no color fishies can hide in a drop of water. It used to drive me crazy when the pond was only 15 inches deep and had stones in the bottom. Of course they were the ones that survived the raccoon attacks the best.

From pond to pond, hummm. That does seem like a big jump but a couple of years ago I put a bunch of gourami in the pond. They surprised the heck out of me when they made a habit of leaping out of the water from one side of the pond to the other. That is 10 to 14 feet. They weren't being chased either. They just seemed to enjoy it.(I don't put them in the pond anymore. They wouldn't make even a mouthful for some of the larger fishies, now.) It is possible the eggs got stuck on the legs of a bird or furry critter and got transferred. Mom nature likes to spread the wealth.

I finally had to put a lid on the aquariums inside. The gourami leaped from tank to tank. They seldom missed but it was nerve wracking.

This is so weird now it is out of control.

I put 2-3 tiny water lettuce from the main pond (with fish) to the little pond that I completely drained and scrubbed out this spring. There are no rocks or any places to hide, it's small, and I got everything out of it before I filled it.

So last night I'm out with my flashlight to check the tadpole I put in there (who is fine BTW thanks, sprouting little legs too) and as I see the tadpole swim under some water lettuce for cover out swims another fish! He looks like the poor little fellow I found that morning, just maybe a little smaller.

A bird may cough up one dead fish but not two and not still alive!

I'm wondering what killed the other guy I saw. I don't tend that pond much beyond topping off the water (with treated water) and pumping air into it, the filter & pump never really filtered out anything just kept some water flowing down the rock cascade.

I did treat the water with PraziPro (as I'm treating my pond and indoor tank too) on Saturday but that is supposed to be very safe stuff.

Huh!

jalal: Thanks for the compliment! I'll see if I can find out a name for the grass. We got it from a friend who was chopping huge pieces out of his garden. It will grow without bounds over the years. Very hardy and comes back like clockwork every spring. I even have one clump 2 years now growing only so-so but it isn't planted! The root ball is just sitting on the ground.

sleeplessinftwayne: That's a funny story. I'd love to see the fish jump from pond to pond or tank to tank. I wonder how they know which way to jump?

Lovely ponds! My first guess is that the water lettuce from the fish pond had eggs in the roots. Sometimes birds who have visited another pond may have fish eggs on their feet but that is rare. Life finds a way......

Lisa

Ernie, I had a time where I thought I was imagining things about the fishies jumping from tank to tank. The numbers kept changing in them but I only made the connection when I saw one jump two minutes after I counted. He made the landing perfectly. Since there had been only two fish in that tank it would have been difficult to make a mistake. It seemed the males jumped the most often and the jumps were to the tanks that had the most females. Many years ago we had Zebra Danios and every morning when I came downstairs, I had to retrieve them from the carpet around the tank until we got a different cover. I had been told they were jumpers but no one mentioned that about the Gourami. Oddly enough, most of the Zebras survived. I think they waited until they heard me coming down the stairs.