I am looking to buy some fish for a pond to eat mosquito larvae etc. Nothing exotic just standard local fish so preferably don’t get eaten by heron!
Pond is approx 20m2.
Any ideas what to buy and where?
Well years ago we used Magasin Vert for fish both pond and tropical. Maybe Jardiland etc?
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Some Bricos - some garden centres … Bit random round here.
Not sure there’s a heron proof species of fish.
Goldfish are cheap and grow quite quickly. Quite robust
At 20m2 you could try Koi - they vary widely in price - but there’s cheaper breeds.
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We have carp, gardons, rotangles and some others I forget. I would ‘t really recommend carp - they are also called pond pigs as they are hugely mucky. Although the mirroe carp were beautiful and I do miss them. But we like our others and have no mosquitoes.
(We lost around 2000 fish in 2022 from drought, rehomed the ones we managed to catch (about 50) and kept about 5 small carp and about 12 others alive in a cuve until the autumn. Last year we did see babies, so are hoping for better things this year. All these came from a few pairs that previous owner’s son bought 25 years ago. So if you get some and they are happy you should have them forever)
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I remember you telling us - so sad, so I won’t “like” your post, but glad to hear there are babies. Here’s hoping this summer is less cruel.
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We STILL haven’t got our much longed-for (by me) pond, but I’m ever hopeful. In the UK we deliberately didn’t have fish because we had frogs and newts and understood that fish eat the tadpoles. Were we wrong about that?
We have 3 ponds and all 3 have nothing in there that didn’t arrive of its own accord, frogs, newts, toads, snakes, boatmen, skimmers, me, etc. etc. but no mosquitos and no fish.
We have had 1 heron in 20 years, I might break the rules and introduce some fish if I thought that we could get more herons to visit, 
, perhaps not, I don’t believe in messing with nature. 
Judging by the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of frogs we have with many fewer fish I don’t think it will be a problem. And the baby fish were gobbling as much of the frog spawn that they could stuff into their little stomachs.
Thank for the reassurance @JaneJones . I’m not a massive fan of fish but do want to get rid of mosquito larvae - however, not at the cost of amphibians, which I’m a huge fan of
(By the way - just sent an email!)
I can confirm the babies thing - we’ve had 5 for nearly 3 years - this autumn/winter that number has more than doubled! We did think they would never reproduce though at one stage, as we had got some from a garden centre, and two others from a neighbour who has never had to replenish her stock, despite frequent visits from the heron!
Probably didn’t express myself well. When we had 2000+ fish we had loads and loads of frogs, and other similar stuff like little salamanders and so on.
Without the fish we are over-run by the hopping, croaking hoards. The noise earlier this month when they were mating was remarkable. The pond is now covered with frog spawn, and however hard our baby fish try they will not make much of a dent .
Nature tends to balance itself out if left alone. So don’t worry too much.
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