Cost their weight in Gold

Purchased last April for 1 Euro each and put in a part of a garden pond I was building at the time. In November the pond still wasn't finished and as we need around 5 feet depth to survive the winter, the goldfish were quickly transferred indoors into an old aquarium from my brother in law. Then had to buy a pump, lighting, loads of chemicals etc. Now after some 6 months of energy costs (luckily no heating needed), they are being put back outdoors today, in the still provisional pond!
I hope perhaps to get some garden landscaping advice on how to get this project finished as I don't want to go through the procedure again in 2011/12!

However, we can be quite proud that we had no losses due to sickness etc - neither my wife nor I had any experience with aquariums & didn't try to understand pH values etc. We simply fed them, cleaned the filter every few weeks & if the water got a bit green, put a squeeze or two of anti-algae liquid in the water. Had I read beforehand what we SHOULD have been doing daily, we would never have started. Given the "acquisition" cost/unit of fish, many would have left them out all winter to take their chances (it was a cold winter) but that's not how animal matters are dealt with here. The horses get fresh carrots daily, I get vegetables from a can!

The fish seemed to enjoy being in the pond again & even came up to the surface the moment we fed them this evening.