Slowing Down on Feeding Pond Fish for the Season

Julie in Perry Township asks, ‘good morning. I have a question about my goldfish. I’ve started feeding them once a day. So now with the spring and fall food, how often do I do it now? When do I start backing off?’

All right, that’s a great question. I know a lot of people that have ponds with fish are asking that same question to themselves. So what you wanna do here is as we cool down, we wanna slow down on the amount that we’re feeding the fish. Some people will feed daily. And if you’ve been feeding daily, you wanna go to every other day for a week and then every third day for a week and basically back the feeding down to where eventually you stop. But you don’t wanna really stop overnight. So you wanna slowly start them in the spring and slowly stop them in the fall. And then you want your pump and your filter system to run for at least two weeks after you stop feeding them.

Some people do run their pumps through the winter. I always caution people when doing so because you’re taking that 50 degree pond water and you’re pumping it up into 10 degree air and it can super cool the pond. We actually recommend, our company stance is we recommend shutting the pumps down and running an aerator in the pond in the winter time. It moves much less water, but it also forces oxygen in the water so the fish can breathe. And in doing that though, your filter system is shut down.

You never wanna feed in the winter. And it’s not really great to feed when the water temperature drops below 50 because the digestive tract of the fish actually slows down and they can’t process that food. So it is important to start slowing down. If you’ve been feeding daily, for sure this week go to every other day. Next week, go twice a week and then the week after only once. And then by the beginning of November, you’ll be able to be done feeding for the season.

Questions? Email us at [email protected] or call one of our two locations: Portage (330-499-0101) or Everhard (330-492-1243).