My neighbor suggested I get two goldfish from Petsmart and see how they did in the pond. Without feeding them, I wasn't expecting them to foul the pond or cause many problems.

The little $0.14 goldfishes grew quickly and they were very pretty. Then one day my wife asked me, "What are all those things swimming around?". It turns out my goldfish had babies. Lots of them. Dozens at first, more than a hundred by the end of the season. Ugh.

Goldfish are an invasive species in the U.S. You can't just release them into a local pond or river. It took a while to figure out what to do with them.

For a few years I was capturing the small ones with a minnow trap and transferring them to a auxiliary pond. I felt bad for those ones so I actually fed those fish. I drove those fish in batches to Center Point Pond. They put the goldfish into their outside demonstration ponds where they enjoy a nice life for a while. Maybe raccoons eat them.

Now that I have my plants protected from the fish, I think I've slowed down their reproduction/survival, so I don't think it's as much of a problem anymore.