Catfish!?

So, one night while hanging out in the backyard with our neighbor (who has an AMAZING urban farm) we were telling him how we wanted to get a catfish to put into the pond. Our thoughts were that the catfish would help keep the pond clean by eating some of the algae and muck that accumulates. So, just the other day our friendly neighbor pops his head over the fence and excitedly tells me that we are the proud owners of a catfish. He caught it on his fishing trip that day and threw it in our pond. I'm pretty sure it came out of Lake Norman. At first I was super excited about this. Then, I thought I better do a little research on it. Should have done that BEFORE asking for the little guy!

Like I said, this is a learning experience-a science project. I started googling wild catfish in a koi pond. The results I found were mostly not good. I found that you shouldn't add wild caught fish into a habitat with pet store fish because of the chance of adding harmful things like parasites, which the wild fish may be carrying. I kinda freaked out about this because I have really come to love the koi we have. To remove the harmful parasites, if there are any in there now, we would have to drain the pond, clean it, treat it, then refill it! That would be terrible! Not to mention all of our fish would probably die.  Since the catfish is already in the pond we are going to take our chances and see what happens. There is also the chance that he could eat some of the goldfish, but the koi are too big for him to eat, thankfully.

It's been about a week since the catfish was added (I haven't even seen him yet) and the goldfish and koi seem perfectly fine still. They are eating and swimming as normal. If all works out and our fish stay in good health I hope to train that illusive catfish to come to the surface and eat from our hands. That would be really cool. I will keep you all updated on that situation.

The next step for Project Pond is to find a good sand filter. The water is starting to get a bit green from algae and it will most likely get worse through the summer. The sand filter along with the plants, stone and sand in the header pond and planter should be enough to keep the water nice and clear, but we've been wrong before :)