Any fish-keepers out there?

Herons are sneaky

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My fish also disappear on occasions or rather should I say become shy now and again. I have been putting this down to something scaring them but I am not so sure. I have had herons pinch fish in the past and maurauding cats sometimes visit my garden. I have detered these with an electric fence around the pond but while I don't lose fish anymore they have recently been exhibiting periods of shyness again. I am wondering if it is the down to the wild swings in temperature we have been experiencing. When its cold they do tend to become sluggish and hide in the deeper water among the weeds and eat very little if anything. Mine is a small pond and may well be effected by these swings much more than say a larger pond. I'm leaning towards temperature changes.

peedee

We have quite a large pond - about 30,000 litres with about 30 goldfish / shubunkins etc in it. They do disappear in the winter - down to the bottom which is over 2m deep, but at the moment, they are very active near to the surface. I have lost a couple to Mr Heron in the past but, thankfully, he seems to have given up on his visits for the time being. Although we do have cats next door, they don't seem to be a problem and I doubt that they could get at them anyway, because of the design of the pond.

When we first moved here, I stocked the pond with fish from the local garden centre and they didn't last long before succumbing to disease so I re-stocked (by mail-order!) from a UK company specialising in pond fish and for the last five years they have absolutely thrived and due to their breeding activity I now have far more than I bought -including some jet-black ones which I have never seen before.

We have had both a total loss to the local heron and also fish that go out of sight. The pond is now netted to stop the former. A neighbour also had an otter visit, the fish bones were laid out around the edge of his pond. Hope you see your fish again. 🐟🐠🐡

Thanks for everyone's comments. Latest update, yesterday I very briefly saw four of the five, if there are still five remaining.

Last year I lost 13 fish in total including quite a large ghost carp. This was whilst we were away on holiday when we entrusted the feeding and care to a relative. The very hot weather meant a severe lack of oxygen but the relative didn't phone me to ask what to do when the fish started to die. She netted some of the corpses out and put them in a bucket in the garden shed. The stink in the very warm shed when we returned from holiday was dreadful. Needless to say that particular relative won't be entrusted with them again! 

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If anyone is interested in electric fences for ponds, I got mine >here<

peedee

We have a small pond with about 8 fish (small) and also red Crested Newts (all inherited when we moved in).  We were sitting in the garden last year and we were amazed to watch a Blackbird catch, kill and eat one the the newts, never thought Blackbirds would do that, we could not believe it. There is a shallow part at the end and the birds use it as a bath and get the clay for nesting, we think that is how the blackbird found the newts and also they may have taken some of the fish. 

JohnM20 sounds like a heron attack. We’ve had the same thing happen in our pond. We saw the heron early one morning and scared it off. We didn’t see any fish for weeks and as we had plans to relocate the pond, we were about to go ahead and empty it, only to find most of the fish still very much alive and swimming about. It just takes time to get their confidence back.