Cautionary Tale

[Anthony]

I was at the local garden centre last summer and noticed they were selling Sturgeon.  I instantly took a liking to the fish because of their unusual shape and the way they moved around the water - Quite different to your normal pond fish I thought.  Despite the price I decided to buy a couple and put them in the pond.

At the time I mentioned on a discussion forum somewhere either here or on BBC gardening that I had got these fish and had anyone any tips for keeping them.  Other than the obvious stuff about buying sinking food etc someone mentioned that the pond needs to be kept clear of Blanketweed as Sturgeon are prone to swimming into it and getting trapped.  I took this on board but didn't really give it much thought until that was last week when after inspecting the pond I noticed one of my sturgeon wrapped from head to tail in the stuff and struggling to move.  After a few minutes of trying to free it I finally manged to succeed and thankfully so far it seems to have recoverd from it's ordeal.  I'm only glad that on that day I decided to go out and look, I guess if I had left it another couple of days then it perhaps might not have been so lucky.

[Anthony]

[grawrc]

Anthony all I remember about sturgeon comes from my student days:

Caviar's roe of the virgin sturgeon
The virgin sturgeon's a very fine fish......

The next two rows would take us into the Watershed... :( :(

[Anthony]

:)

[Hyacinth]

Anthony all I remember about sturgeon comes from my student days:

Caviar's row of the virgin sturgeon
The virgin sturgeon's a very fine fish......

The next two rows would take us into the Watershed... :( :(

Only the third?

You realise that I'm going out in a bit & I'll be singing it all afternoon now ;D

Don't sturgeon need a very very large pond to live in?

[fluffygrue]

Yeah, I read that sturgeon grow to many metres.. Is that true?
Lovely looking fish, though. :)

Melanie

[Anthony]

I'm led to believe that in the wild certain types e.g. The Beluga can grow very big (3+ meters in extreme cirumstances)  The couple I have are a Siberian and a Diamond back and in pond conditions they'll prolly reach around 0.5 meters (assuming they can avoid the blanketweed for long enough that is!)

[Hyacinth]

Anthony, do sturgeon have the intelligence of Koi? The Koi I knew seemed to 'recognise' their owners...... 8)

[lilylover]

I had 2 beautiful diamond sturgeon which would come when you tapped the pond edge and take food from your hand, absolutely lovely fish.... and then neighbours got a cat  :-X  I found them mauled on the path the next day  :'(  needless to say I don't like cats much.

[Hyacinth]

Oh how dreadful :'(

Glad that you had the thought to go visit your fish Anthony before it got drowned/suffocated? by the weed.

[Anthony]

I'm not too sure about intelligence to be honest, I guess if they can learn to recognise tapping on the pond edge as a trigger for food it'll certainly put them up there with koi etc.  I do know however that they have very poor eyesight, I guess being bottom dwellers a keen sense of smell and hearing would best equip them for looking for food.  I suspect that's what causes the problems with both blanketweed and neighbour's cats!

[Anthony]

Just as a slight update,  I've now had to rescue said sturgen on four separate occasions since his initial tangle with the blanket weed some weeks ago.  Ironically my other sturgeon hasn't managed to get himself trapped at all as yet!!

[rosebud]

Anthony, can you remove the blanket weed it would save the poor fish keep getting tangled and stressed?.

[telboy]

Praps it's a'dippy one'?

[Anthony]

I'm trying but as we all know it's not the easiest stuff to remove.  He doesn't really help himself to be fair; whenever I see him he's always either in the Blanket Weed or heading in it's general direction.  I'll perhaps up the clay and barley straw dosage until the BW has completely gone.

[Mrs Ava]

They are beautiful fish and we have always looked longingly at them, but the price and the fact we only have a small pond prevents us purchasing them.  I guess they have problems with the blanket weed because they are kinda spiney along their backs....or is that my imagination?

[gardenqueen]

The blanket weed in my pond, is greatly diminishing, after planting up some water cress in the waterfall area and throwing some in to the pond! Buy a bag of watercress from your local Supermarket, and try. You can always eat the cress as well of course.

[Anthony]

I'm attacking the BW on four fronts now; Barley Straw, Nishikoi Clay, a newly aquired albino Grasscarp with pink eyes that looks like an alien and finally if all else fails removing it by hand :(  I suspect once the Water Lillies and Water Hyancinth start covering up some of the surface area then the problem may go away but if not then the Water Cress will be the next option, provided of course the Bread knife doesn't stick it one of her salads first :)

[Belinda]

Hi Anthony,

I'd be very interested to know if you actually ever see the Grass carp eating blanket weed as they are rumoured to do. We recently saw them advertised as weed eaters when visiting family in the Midlands, but when we asked at our local World of Water back home we were told that its complete rubbish, an urban myth??

[Anthony]

To be fair I've not actually seen it eat a great deal since it arrived although, whatever it is eating, it is certainly eating a lot of it as the fish has doubled in size since I bought it.