I am certainly not an expert in your subject, but it appears that most people simply just don't worry about it, or in fact act to stop the whole problem. For example, I hear that one approach is to run some kind of mop around a pond to catch (and kill) some eggs or very small fish.

I am down in zone 7 and don't need to bring fish in, although we still get plenty of freezing. I don't think one inch fish get eaten but I don't have any huge gold fish. I actually only have comets that initially came from three comets. There must have been plenty of variation in those three. Initially, most offspring were red like their parents, but years later, I have some that start black and always turn red after months. I now also have many pale ones with spots like you describe, that haven't changed color for a year.

Yeah Ive read alot on the net about people unable to control their goldfish populations. For me, I'd just like to be able to have at least one goldfish that started it's life in the pond and watch it grow up. I used to have guppies and when they gave birth I frantically tried to save all the young and ended up with hundreds of them. I gave them all away to friends and petstores. Then I got cherry barbs and they started breeding like crazy so I gave them away too.

I'm hoping that it doesn't happen to the goldfish but I wouldn't mind a few babies surviving each year. My friend has a much bigger pond so if they ever got overloaded, they have place to go.

Of my twenty + fish only three were bought, the rest just happened. It is really hard to spot baby fish... since being hard to spot is how they get to be adult fish, and unfortunately there is no other way of knowing if they spawned. If you can keep your pond from freezing solid over the winter I would just leave them in there till they get big enough, but I'm in 5a.

My pond come winter freezes completly. All the way down to the bottom. I guess I could get one of those heaters, but they seem to do fine when I bring them in (except for this year's mishap) Usually around March I have to remove the ice using a shovel so I can ready it for spring. If I didn't that puppy wouldn't fully melt untill May.

I decided it would be fun to put my underwater camera in the pond to see if I could see anything interesting. I set it in various spots and clicked record and came back few mminutes later to watch them. Didn't see much, no water beetles which was surprising but I did notice that my white comet is defently a male! From the frames you can clearly see those white bumps on his gills. I didn't notice this on the other bigger comet but boy was she fat. I'm assuming 'she' based on her plumpness and cause I'm hoping her to be one! I did notice the white comet chased her around a bit for a couple seconds a couple of times. It wasn't constant pestering but there was a chase or two. I guess I'll just have to let them be and make nature do its course! Will be easy as I'm going away from two weeks.

Thanks.