My comets normally spawn for a few weeks once the weather warms up in the spring. However, this year the weather has been fluctuating quite a bit between hot and cool. Normally they would have finished all their hanky panky but I notice they are still at it.... With respect to offspring: Perhaps my comets have defective genes but the coloring of my comets is not stable and it seems to be worse with their offspring. Several have lost nearly all the orange coloring. The shubunkins, wakin and koi all seem to have stable coloring patterns.

Most of my frogs came back last night and are busy spawning. At the last count I had 41 frogs. Sonny took a video this evening, but it was quite dark. We have put a small video clip on the website. It isn't brilliant, but the sound is nice. I always think they sound like a loud cat purring. If you want to go and see, it is still www.the-horsfalls.co.uk I get so excited when they all come back. I never get any work done on the first day as I am so busy looking out of the window at them. Today was so busy in the garden, the birds were just swooping everywhere and yet the frogs didn't take any notice. As soon as I went out they all hid under the watercress. I haven't noticed my little toads yet. I hope they have done well and survived the winter. Alison

congrats on your first spawning! Sounds like all 3 had fun to be honest - provided your Ghosty came from similar water conditions theres no reason why it wouldn't be "in the mood" so to speak, in fact in commercial breeding they separate the sexes, raise the temp, then put them back together to stimulate spawning, which sounds exactly like what happened! OK - eggs, the truly clear ones and any white ones, will be infertile, the fertile eggs will be an opaque slightly beize colour, which will darken the closer to hatching they become. If you want to raise them the BEST first food is infusoria (they move on to daphnia etc after a few days)you COULD fiddle around spending days in complicated biological preparation for something they'll eat for a week and then move on from, or you could do as ive always done and just spend a couple of quid on the pre-prepared liquid ones you can get - it's not like they'll be on it for long anyway - remember - the first 3-4 days after hatching they dont need ANYTHING as they'll be consuming their yolk sac - once they reach the 10-15 day point i feed them on REALLY finely crushed FLAKE (not the pellets - they don't crush finely enough - just bog standard goldfish flake) - as they get bigger just de-crease the amount of crushing, till theyre up to about 1/2 " long at which point i'd switch to roughly crushed pellets. If at all possible i'd avoid putting them back into the pond wih the adults until youve got a nice weedy section for them to hide in, and they're about 1" long (growth depends on temp and food). As for the malachite green - yes, it's great stuff for keeping down the fungus i use just enough to give the water a very light tinge - approx half the standard dosage. Don't forget - you will NEED to cull if you are raising outside of the pond or you'll end up with THOUSANDS of fry, that you just don't have room for and will stifle the growth of the good ones - as cruel as it sounds i just pop them back in with mum and dad, and pretty soon they're a fish supper - the other most humane way is pop them in a bag, and freeze them - the fish go into hibernation mode, their brain shuts down, and they effectively die in their sleep. Lastly - Good Luck!!!

My pond come winter freezes completly. All the way down to the bottom. I guess I could get one of those heaters, but they seem to do fine when I bring them in (except for this year's mishap) Usually around March I have to remove the ice using a shovel so I can ready it for spring. If I didn't that puppy wouldn't fully melt untill May. I decided it would be fun to put my underwater camera in the pond to see if I could see anything interesting. I set it in various spots and clicked record and came back few mminutes later to watch them. Didn't see much, no water beetles which was surprising but I did notice that my white comet is defently a male! From the frames you can clearly see those white bumps on his gills. I didn't notice this on the other bigger comet but boy was she fat. I'm assuming 'she' based on her plumpness and cause I'm hoping her to be one! I did notice the white comet chased her around a bit for a couple seconds a couple of times. It wasn't constant pestering but there was a chase or two. I guess I'll just have to let them be and make nature do its course! Will be easy as I'm going away from two weeks. Thanks.