Garden pond - two recent fatalities - any idea why?

[IDidntChoseThePondLife]

we built a lockdown wildlife pond using some water from a local pond. In that water came two fish, a newt and some assorted tadpoles. this was in June. Now end of August, the fish have both died. :(
the water has taken on a bit of a reddish tinge, and it doesn't look as healthy as it did. We haven't had much rain lately so the level is low, but I didn't want to put lots of tap water in there, I don't have a butt.
I'm not sure what to do and feel bad about the fish. should I have fed them perhaps.
The cat has been seen watching the pond very closely the last couple of days, but if she'd killed them, surely she would have fished them out of the pond!
Any help would be appreciated.

Also, although you may able to keep some native sticklebacks (when you have a good filter and have gotten rid of the excessive mulm/wastes with a bacteria product in a 55 litre generally speaking fish are a BAD idea for a wildlife pond.
Not only do they eat all the wildlife but they also produce an awful lot of waste.
Hence why filtration is required to keep them healthy.
They are very much ‘big pond’ creatures.

Plants are oxygenating during the day when they are photosynthesising (making food from sunlight). They also have to use the food, so they respire like animals do, which requires the use of oxygen and production of CO2. When the weather is hot they will be super-oxygenating during the day when they are making more oxygen than they are using, but oxygen levels may drop dangerously low at night when they are only using it up and not making any more.

The short story is - plants are good for oxygenation but are not the whole story.

Thanks so much for your posts they were very interesting and informative. I don't actually want fish, they just appeared so must have been teeny when I got the original scoop water from the wildlife garden bath. I was just happy with the tadpoles to be honest.

I don't have water butt as neighbour either side have the drainpipes, so I will need to have a new drainpipe fitted before I can get one. I have lot of buckets out there now so hope I get a few inches at least.

The snails will have a wonderful time in the pond on their own!

If you fill some buckets with tap water and leave them till tomorrow afternoon, the Nast chemicals will have gone.
Well done for putting in your pond, you’ve done a great thing for wildlife.
Don’t be discouraged!

Nasty, no idea where ‘Nast’ came from

Like others, I think you should find the pond does better without the fish. We've a larger (but not big) pond, and sometimes in warm overcast weather have had losses. We got a pond fountain that we use sporadically if we think we need to - haven't used it in a while but must remember it in the autumn as had a whole lot of goldfish hatch last year and right now are probably oversticked! The deepest part is well over a metre which I think is part of why we can mostly leave the pond to look after itself.

Good luck, hope things settle down in a few more weeks.

Your pond looks lovely and I can't believe the comments. My pond went rancid this year too. I'll prob pump it out and start again with rainwater. Still got the frogs in, they hide in mud. I tried some treatment drops last year for duck week infestation and I'm sure that didn't help. Sometimes ponds do correct themselves with oxygenating plants. Snails also help with water quality and usually they thrive in mine. Not sure what happened in the last year or so. Perhaps the treatment for the duck weed, which was introduced when I got snails from garden centre.

Possibly if your pond is not deep, if the weather's been warm, it might raise the water temp resulting in algae etc.
Is it in the shade as that might help.

Pretty sure moving newts is also illegal Not all newts are Great Crested.

Newts are perfectly capable of moving from pond to pond by themselves. They're amphibians, so they spend a lot of their time on land, returning to water to breed.

I didn’t know that about the oxygenating plants at night. Interesting.

I don't have a waterbutt or outdoor tap, I have a large outdoor bin that I fill with a hosr and use to water plants, top up pond instead of carrying buckets in and out. .

Obviously not suitable if you have children likely to try and climb in.

I would have thought 55 litres without a pump would be too small to sustain fish without a build up of waste/nitrogen.