yep! but they wont get all of them.

Much to the disagreement of the 'manager' for interfering with nature, I set up a temporary partition with fly mesh (used for lourve vents, not the wire type) atached a small pole which lay above the water line along the width of the pond. This left the frogspawn in the shallow area of the pond and the fish had the remaining 3/4's deepeer area. I also did'nt like the thought of them getting eaten before getting a chance in life.

Well Done Beenz,
They'll have a hard enough life even if they make it out of the pond. Give them all the help you can.
then more will return to your pond
Dave

Hi all this is my first post. Top forum, have been reading for couple of weeks.

I have gold fish and tadpoles as well. The goldfish are 7-10 cm long, 4 canary yellow and 2 shubunkins (and 2-3 babies 1cm that we are very proud of!)

Are my goldfish big enough to eat the taddies? they had a problem eating wheatgerm sticks last year, they sucked/chewed and spat out several times!

I had spawn in the fishpond last year, the fish had a feast when it hatched, hatchling tadpoles would be eaten quite easily by 7-10cm GF.

Hi Marky & welcome. I crumble those large sticks above the water as the bigger fish steal them all and the little ones cannot put them in there mouth, this way everyone gets a little piece of the action.

Sean and Beenz

Thanks for the replies. I am glad the fish will have a treat. I don't want to feed to fish until the temp gets to a constant 12-15 a least, so if they are hungry there will be food for them. My pond has very unstable temp as it is v.shallow and small, and being up quite high in the north downs the nights are colder than average. Over the last 7 days the day temp has been 12 down to 5! I'll crush the sticks in future when the temp is right.

Sean did you see the fish actually eat the tadpoles? I would love to see that.
Marky

I have seen my goldfish adults take full sized, ie ready to morph, tadpoles that I had added to the pond. I dont know if they actually ate them because I did see one or two tadpoles a day or so later but I had added more than one or two.
Re the hatchling tadpoles, no I didnt see the fish actually eat them but there was a frenzy on top of and around the frog spawn and it wasnt the fish spawning. I never saw a single tadpole in the pond that year.

Do carp/koi eat newts? Last week I saw a 12" koi repeatedly attack, presumably to eat, a 2 1/2" newt or dragon fly larvea I couldn't tell which as it was squirming frantically. Eventually they both went too the bottom and I didn't see the conclusion.

Marky
See my fish eat tadpoles every year.
As soon as they leave the 'jelly' and start swimming around the ponds the fish 'stuff' themselves.
The pond sides and bottom are usually completely covered with tadpoles and there are always plenty left. The fish can only eat so many! They don't seem to bother with them when they get above a certain size.
Sue

If you are interested in watching life in action, there is a site called Arkive (www.arkive.org), where you type in the animal species you want and there are pictures and videos of those creatures in action. The common newt one for example, is quite good. Personally, I can't watch eating activity, but I do accept it happens in a natural environment.

Here is a link that might be useful: Arkive

http://www.fishdoc.co.uk/cases/goldfish01.htm

Arkive is a great site! Thank you chippewacat - Gordon now has newts and taddies in his wildlife pond - he's like a kid with a new toy so the website is of particular interest!

Tricia

How sweet! Hope he has fun!

I scooped it all out after it was laid last year(instruction's from an over protective mum , and kid's) and put it in a baby bath. It took ages for them all to hop off, even though they were fed better than me. Darent tell them what happened every time I cut the lawn....