Pond Fish
Find and offer pond fish in Panama.
On a Panamanian farm a fish pond usually means tilapia raised for the table, but a garden pond is another thing entirely: koi, comet goldfish and shubunkins, and in a hot lowland yard a shoal of guppies or platies that can stay outdoors all year. These fish look for a new home rather than a buyer, most often a koi that has outgrown its pond or the fish left behind in the garden of a family that is moving. The nets, pumps, filters and pond food that go with them are bought and sold here, new and pre-owned.
Koi, comet goldfish and the small fish of a tropical pond:
the size they reach as adults is what separates them. Koi are coloured carp that keep growing for years, until a big one is longer than your forearm, and they need a deep pond with filtration to match. Kohaku, sanke and showa are the patterns most people know, and butterfly koi carry long, trailing fins. Comet goldfish and shubunkins stay far smaller and suit a preformed pond or a half barrel. Guppies, platies and mollies make up the small end, and with no winter to bring them in they can live outdoors all year. Fancy goldfish with twin tails and bulging eyes are a different matter. Orandas, ranchus and telescopes swim too slowly to compete with koi and are easy prey from above, so they belong with aquarium fish, in a tank indoors. Tubs, nets and pumps for holding and moving pond fish are under aquariums and aquarium accessories.
Tilapia and carp from a farm pond:
keep them out of an ornamental one. On a farm in Bugaba or Herrera an earthen pond stocked with tilapia and carp is a crop, and its fish behave like one. Male tilapia dig nest pits in the bottom, tear up plants and drive other fish off their patch, and they breed so fast that a garden pond is soon full of them. If someone offers you fish out of a farm pond, think of them for another farm pond.
Herons, kingfishers and the night visitors at a koi pond:
a pond in an open garden is a feeding station for wildlife. Herons and egrets wade in at first light and stand on any shallow shelf to strike, a kingfisher takes small goldfish in a single dive, and after dark an opossum or a raccoon fishes from the edge. Steep sides, enough depth to drop out of reach, a length of pipe to hide in and a net or a few lines of fishing line across the water stop most of it. When the brightest fish in a pond vanish one at a time and nothing ever floats, the culprit has wings.
Koi herpesvirus and the newcomers to a pond:
the risk in taking on someone else’s koi lies in what they carry, not in what they show. Koi herpesvirus can ride in a fish that looks perfect and then kill most of a pond once it spreads, and it moves fastest in warm water. Goldfish can carry it without ever falling ill. Keep any new fish in a separate tub with its own net for several weeks before it joins yours, and ask whether the pond it comes from has had deaths nobody could explain. Then look at the fish themselves. Walk away from red streaks in the fins, open sores on the flanks, fish rubbing themselves against the bottom or the walls, or gills that look pale or ragged. A young koi’s pattern is not settled either: the black on a small showa or sanke can come and go as it grows, so a striking pattern on a fingerling is a promise rather than a fact.
Passing on koi when a pond is drained or a house changes hands:
give the variety, rough length and number of fish, and how long they have lived in that pond. Koi are meant to be seen from above, so photograph them from over the water on a bright day rather than through the side of a bucket. Ask anyone who replies how deep their pond is, what filters it and whether it is netted, because a koi going into a shallow decorative pool will not last. Move them in big bags or a covered tub, out of the sun in the car. Anyone selling a house with a koi pond should settle with the buyer whether the fish stay before moving day, because koi in an empty house can go weeks with nobody clearing the pump.