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I've just set up my pond and don't know which goldfish species to put in it. I'm not very familiar with goldfish, so please excuse my ignorance.

The pond is approximately 50 gallons. It has plants, gravel, terracotta plants... The filter is home made, but does the volume of the pond 18 times a hour. The pond is 1.2m x .62m.

I would like to house ~10 white cloud minnows, ~7 hillstream loaches and hopefully 3 goldfish.

I don't invision in the near future (next 2 years) setting up another pond, so the goldfish would have to be small enough to spend its life in the pond. The weather does not get too severely cold (the pond will never freeze, and I would doubt it'd often go below 15C). However, it gets quite hot. During hot weather I plan to place an ice slab in the water to slowly melt. (In the summer, my inside tanks heat up from 26C to 35C, so I hate to think what a pond would do with little protection.)

The goldfish breed would not have to endure a cycle (I'm going to cycle with the minnows). My pond also has a reasonably strong current from one end to the other.

I don't have too many conditions with my goldfish... I want a breed which has a variety of colours or patterns (I want to be able to tell them apart ) and they can't grow too big for my pond. I also am not a fan of telescope eyes, missing dorsal fins or shortened bodies... But I'm sure I could open up, if you convince me these fish are actually healthy. They always seem sickly to me.

I hope I'm not too specific... the most important thing is a goldfish that fits in my pond. I'm looking forward to your suggestions.

Right now I am tossing between ryukins, fantails, and orandas. Any experiences you have had with these goldfish would be appreciated, as well as any further breed suggestions. Thanks for reading.

(Woo! First post on this username. I keep changing e-mails and losing my password, and not being able to retrieve it... )

50 gal may be a little on the crowded side

The fantails would be your best bet in my opinion (not entirly sure on it) because they don't get quite as big as the others.

Inky

I didn't realise fantails were smaller! That does make them a bit more appealing. Can anyone confirm this?

I know I'm going to be pushing it to stock it this way... I always add fish slowly, so if it starts looking crowded, I'll stop.

Thanks for your reply.

when stocking goldfish, dont mix the classes, as different goldfish have different swimming handicaps. in a pond, out of the three, i would say ryukins would be good, but again 3 might push it, and 2 would be better in a small pond.

I will only want one species, because I think things look better in groups.

Two is a possibility!