Reptile & Amphibian Forums

It's been a quiet 9 months since I built my pond, but that came to a dramatic end sometime early this morning. When I went out after breakfast to visit, I found fish parts scattered all over my patio. Apparently the raccoon actually climbed into the pond because both of my potted water poppies had all the stems broken where he had been standing on them. My heater had also been moved even though the wire is tucked under a rock and had not been touched. Anything over about 3 inches was killed (except for my two beautiful paradise fish and one black goldfish that lost his left eye).

My question is one that has undoubtedly appeared on this forum many times before. Has anyone had much success with motion sensors attached to lights or sprinklers as a deterrent to these creatures? I've also heard that electric fences work well.

Until I come up with a solution, I built a temporary lid for the pond (which is about 100 gal.) out of plywood and placed several bricks on top to secure it. Any other ideas would be welcome. Thanks.

Hi,

I'm sorry to hear about your fish. We haven't had a problem with raccoons, but with herons. We haven't figured out a way to discourage them yet. Hopefully, someone will have some ideas.

Minuet
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Min

We had the same situation happen to our pond several months ago. A raccoon destroyed all of our water lilies when standing on the pots to catch our fish. We have motion sensor lights installed in our yard, and this did nothing to deter the raccoon. We tried netting and it did not work at all.

It was chewed right through and he got all of our medium and large fancy goldfish and koi. Luckily a handful of the smaller and faster fish survived. We never tried a motion sensor sprinkler because we didn't want to deal with the dog getting sprayed or ourselves. But what did work for us was one of those alligator decoys with the glowing eyes.

After putting our pet gator in the pond we haven't had any problems since. It's actually only a fake head of a gator but it looks very convincing especially since it moves around the pond because of the filter. It looks like its actually swimming. Our gator also keeps geese away as well. Anyway I hope this hopes save someone else's fish from being eaten!