Breeding of coldwater fish I

The first question when deciding to breed coldwater fish is, should we breed in a pond or in an aquarium.

Two advantages of the pond are:

Large volume of water

In good weather, natural foods for the young fish are abundance

Breeding in ponds has its disadvantages too:

Especially in British climate, apart from extremes of heat or frost and ice, the normal temperature variations are very great and there is little that we can do to control them. Furthermore, these changes are rapid, occurring within a few hours.

There is also a great discrepancy in the amount of light, especially sunlight and an evenly spread supply is almost hopeless.

The above two disadvantages however have their attenuating factors. Although the atmospheric temperature changes very quickly, a fairly large volume of water is affected only slowly and cushions the fish from the worst of the shock. This is if the water is 3 - 4 feet deep. Secondly, the fish seem to have a natural ability to pick out the coming weather and will normally spawn just at the start of a good spell. Nevertheless the good weather, especially in Britain have a nasty tendency to fade off after a very few days.

Though natural foods are abundant in open ponds, so too on occasions are fish lice and water enemies. The pond should thus be capable of being thoroughly cleaned.