Well all the snow has nearly gone but the pond has still quite a bit of ice on it, got a shot of one of the golden orfe through the ice free surface as shown in the photos. The waterfall is kept running 24/7 all year round so there is always a part of the pond surface ice free, although this year only a tiny fraction.
But the fish are very hardy, about 16 years old, but i have had four with a spinal thing, which spreads, probably even more as they have spawned for the last few years.
I did one year get two which survived to about one and a half inches then disapeared,
whether they were eaten or they just died i don't know. If anyone needs advice on building & running a pond feel free to ask, i used to have a website with a pond-life section which was very popular but as i hosted it on geocities it went down when they stopped free hosting.
As i mentioned in the previous post we have foxes in our grounds, well one night last summer one of the fish was on the patio dead, & i knew the net covering the pond had frayed at one end, so as i have 24/7 video recording i saw a cat so we thought we had the culprit. but when i found time to run the tape on i found one of the foxes walking round the pond. I just wish it had hooked one of the "Bent" fish out instead of one of the good ones.