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As anyone living in the northeastern U.S. knows, it's been a really, really weird winter here. The temperatures have been unusually warm for a lot of the winter -- 50s, even 60s -- but there have been some short, bitter cold snaps here, too. There has been more than one week in which the temperatures hit 20 degrees at one end of the week and 65 at the other. And this has gone on absolutely all winter.

I can't help wondering what these seriously seesawing temperatures are doing to my pond and its occupants. I have seven goldfish in a 500-gallon pond; will they be more vulnerable than usual to problems as the pond begins to "wake up"?

Is anyone else worried about this? And if so, what precautions, if any, are you taking to get your fish safely through this timeperiod, when even in more "normal" winters they're most vulnerable to problems?