Is it safe to have large goldfish in your animals drinking water? I don't mean a ton of them, just a couple. What are the advantages and disadvantages? I just inherited about a dozen koi, and am wondering if it would harm the horses, etc. to be consuming fish waste. I will be keeping the tanks very clean with fresh water added daily.

-- Shannon at Grateful Acres Animal Sanctuary (gratacres@aol.com), May 03, 2001

Answers

Around here everyone used to keep minnows in the stock tanks to control larvae. They dont hurt anything provided you dont get so many in the tank that they run out of larvae and die in a batch.

-- William in Wi (gnarledmaw@lycos.com), May 03, 2001.

Hi,

This is my first time posting to this forum, I am getting ready to move to OK soon to start becoming more self sufficient. I love this forum though. Therefore, at this point, I know more about keeping fish than keeping livestock, so I hope if any of this is a bad idea, someone else will jump in and say so.

My first thoughts on reading your post was that goldfish, while being coldwater fish, are primarily vegetarians. They will not eat a lot of larvea, I don't think, so you would have to feed them koi pellets. They are also very very messy fish, prodcucing a lot of waste, so they would be I think the worst fish you could keep in your watering trough.

Second of all, you have to have some way to help control the waste. If you could add a waterlily or something to your tank, it will help with that, as aquatic plants will use the ammonia that your fish give off as waste as fertilizer. I know several fish hobbyists who put rainbow fish, guppies, cichlids and tetras (not all in the same bucket. Probably best to stick to one type of fish) in muck buckets at the beginning of summer to help keep down the mosquito population, with a few plants in them to provide shade and protection for the baby fish (also called fry) I don't see any reason you couldn't do this in your watering trough, since you say that you are going to keep the tanks filled with fresh water every day. I would just wait until it warms up a little before putting them out. These are tropical fish though, so when it starts to get cold again, you are going to have to sell them back to the fish store, bring them inside or they are going to die. They probably will also require a small supplemental feeding of fish food every day.

Koi get very big though, requiring about 20 gallons of water each, so unless you have a very big watering trough, you aren't going to be able to keep a dozen of them in there for very long.

Again, hope I didn't offend. I have been learning on lot on this site, but this is the first time I have ever had knowledge to share!

JanG

-- JanG-NC (splishsplash@ivillage.com), May 03, 2001.

We've always kept goldfish in our stock tanks to keep the mosquito larvae and other bugs down. Goldfish eat about anything, they are carp. As long as the water does not freeze solid all the way to the bottom, they will survive by hibernating at the bottom of the tank. My current goldfish are 4 years old and have always been outside. We had a carp live for 15 years in our 100 gallon stock tank when I was a kid.

I like a tank that has a spigot or drainplug at the bottom to drain off the fish waste from the bottom. This bottom water is excellent for house or greenhouse plants.

Be careful about any water plants you put in a stock tank. Some are poisonous and some would just be an exspensive snack for your critters. A fish shelter can be made of bricks, cement blocks or rocks in the bottom. They need a place to hide from raccoons, too.

-- Laura (LadybugWrangler@hotmail.com), May 04, 2001.

Just an observation on water quality and livestock. I have seen my cows walk pass a fairly pure source of water to go drink out of a waterhole in which their fellow herd members have been using for a commode. Maybe the taste is better.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), May 04, 2001.

Will some little goldfish in my bathtub water tanks keep the goats from drinking the water? It always needs cleaning. Also I put apple cider vinigar in there, and that would probably kill the fish, huh? It sounds like a neat idea though.

-- Cindy in KY (solidrockranch@hotmail.com), May 05, 2001.

Out west here you'll find goldfish in most of the stock tanks, whatever the stock. Some of the cattle are located in remote areas, and the fish help to keep the tanks clean. My friend had a bit of a problem, tho ~ she had to do in a couple of 'coons who were stealing the fish out of the tank! -LOL-

-- ~Rogo (rogo2020@yahoo.com), May 06, 2001.

JanG made some very good points, and Koi are not the same as gold fish, plane ol' gold fish (often called an orange or silver comet)can do well in stock tanks, as almost everyone else posted, but the fancy types are not as hardy, as long as the water smells good it is, if the water smells bad, you know things need changed out

-- Thumper (slrldr@aol.com), May 07, 2001.

I would stick with feeder goldfish in your stock tanks, they aren't as big, or as messy. Here, I can't even use those, my cats know how to fish. ; - ) I use a few bait minnows instead, they're much harder for the cats to see.

-- Connie (Connie@lunehaven.com), May 09, 2001.