Feeding Your Pond Fish During the Fall & Spring Seasons

Fall and spring are crucial times to monitor when and how much you feed your pond fish. During the fall months as the days grow shorter and the nights become longer, this dramatically cools our pond water. Fall is time to winterize, tidy up your pond and reduce your feedings of your pond fish, until you completely stop during winter. Sometime in April-in early-mid spring, weather depending- we begin to gradually begin to start feeding sparingly a couple of times a week, gradually increasing the frequency and amount as the temperature increases.

Koi and goldfish are ectothermic, meaning they are cold-blooded and rely on their surrounding environment to regulate their body temperature. This causes their body temperature to be close to the water's temperature, and their metabolism slows significantly as the water cools. They are unlike our other warm blooded pets like  dogs, and cats, that can regulate their body temperature and need to be fed a healthy, balanced diet daily.   

 That is why it is important to feed your pond fish wheat a.k.a. fall/spring diet and reduce your feedings starting in mid to late September to once a day (if feeding multiple times a day) for a couple of weeks, then reduce to every other day for a couple of weeks, then every 3-4 days until you stop feeding for the season sometime around Halloween. Every year this date will vary with the weather conditions, temperature fluctuations and the region where you live. Fall/spring food is a wheat-based diet that is easier for fish to digest during colder temperatures. Whatever food fish consumes, they must process it and pass through their digestive system within a day or so. The colder the weather the slower the digestive process is and if they are unable to pass their food it gets backed up causing their kidneys and liver to shut down. This results in a toxic effect causing body bloat, eyes to bulge and the scales to extend outward resembling a pinecone.   This disease is known as “dropsy or pinecone disease” which is usually fatal and irreversible.

It may be tempting to feed your fish during the winter when temperatures may hover around the classic “50◦F”. If you decide to give them a snack, you can feed them broken up cheerios cereal that is easily digestible. But keep in mind that there is a risk with overfeeding, so is it worth it? That is your choice to make, one personally I would not take that risk with my precious ponds pets.