Kelli - I have even tried wire covering, it didn't work. I have been using the wooden cover and no raccoons since. I also have chicken wire over my pond containers which the wood covers go over. It seems to protect the fish and plants so far!

I saw something on t.v. that said that raccoons really flourish in the suburban environment. In a world without people, the raccoon population would go down.

There was something in the newspaper yesterday about the board of health investigating the sale of raccoon meat in some Asian markets. More power to the Asian market. Maybe we can ship raccoon meat to China and balance the trade deficit. ;-)

Great idea!

Raccoons are totally wretched creatures. And destructive also. My Spousal Unit dispatches them.

We have a neighbor who pays to have the raccoons trapped and over the years the population has really gone down significantly. We had a sick raccoon in the yard last year. It turned out to have rabies which is a real problem in this area. Between the trapper and the diseases, we are finally winning the war.

I have a long, clay chimney flue pipe in the bottom of my pond. It is about 8" square and the fish can hide in it when the herons are hungry. Something like this: http://superiorclay.com/firepl...
It was inexpensive and has worked very well. While it keeps the fish safe from the raccoons and herons it does not stop the snakes though. We lose most of ours to the snakes.

Well reading these stories; thank god the only menace we have to deal with here in our ponds are algae :p

Hi Arico! We have algae too! Yes, it is a REAL challenge at times to grow waterlilies and water lotus, but when they bloom it is worth all that extra effort to protect them.

Hi All,
Haven't been on for a while so trying to catch up.

Here is a new twist to pests in ponds. A friend just 12 miles from me had an invasion of toads last spring and now it is happening again. She has removed as many as 32 pairs from her pond. She lost a lot of fish last year. We both consulted with Univ. of Fl. and they said toad sperm could kill fish. After same rain she had I woke up from the loud chorus of toads. Checked my pond and I had about 17 pair which I netted and moved to canal down in back of our pasture. Also, I watch closely for the Cuban tree frogs which eat anything they can fit into their mouth. Our small green native frogs, tiny fish, small birds etc. population declined. I kill them immediately and Prof. at Univ. said to freeze them and then busy them. I told him I wasn't going to have those slimy things in my freezer so in the ground they go immediately after I put them to sleep. We are in the country but I don't recall seeing any raccoons and have been in same place 46 years. If they come around my ponds they will be greeted with my 22. Also, popped off 1 heron. Yes, I know they are protected but after he ate 1/2 of my small pond all up he had to go to heron heaven. He had the nerve to stand and stare at me the next morning on walkway that runs between both ponds. He made the mistake of circling above the house so he is now gone. There is another down in our canal but I am hoping he doesn't find his way to the ponds. Larger pond has all 2 and 2 1/2 feet fish in it and they would be hard for him to carry off or swallow but I have seen them spear fish and drop them. Not what I need. My biggest problem with both ponds is leaf drop as they are both under same oak tree. I have to come up with some sort of cover with small enough squares to stop oak blossom from going into ponds. Lost 4 fairly large fish in small pond due to ammonia spike from oak blossom this year. I'm thinking of small square netting stapled to wood framed sections that could be easily moved when necessary. Got to come up with something before next season of leafs dropping. I netted them out 3 times a day but that evidently wasn't enough.
Oh the joys of ponding.
Bonnie

Shooting things wouldn't work around here. We're in town. The neighbors would hear and might report it. Would like to shoot those raccoons, though.

Bonnie, I have large oak trees all around my house, and finally resorted to using bridal veil netting to keep the leaves and then the flowers out of my pond. It's cheap, and comes in fairly wide widths at the fabric store. You might even get lucky and find a bridal veil for next to nothing at a thrift store. Other netting just wasn't fine enough to keep those tiny dried up flowers out of the water but the veil netting works great. If too much stuff collects on it, I can blow it off with the leaf blower and still the tiny flowers don't get through the net.

I put it over the pond as soon as the trees start dropping leaves and take it off once all the flowers are down. I figure why have a pond if you have to keep netting over it all the time??

As for shooting things, I have a spring loaded pellet gun that I 'discourage' critters with. It gets their attention, but won't kill them, and doesn't attract any attention from neighbors. If you go that route, get one with a high muzzle velocity, because the cheap ones don't even phase a squirrel - they get hit in the butt and turn around like "is that all you got??". The one I have shoots straight for at least 50ft. and I've hit a hawk on top of a power pole with it before. He ruffed his feathers and flew away, just what I was hoping for since he was 'hunting' around my bird feeder.

I am really curious about the oak flowers, we call them squigglies, poisoning the fish. I have more than my share of Live Oaks and their trash but have never had a problem with the fish. My pond is tiny and I scoop out once or twice a week during the messy season. I can see the bottom of the pond is a mess with leaves and one of these days I will get to it. I've never netted or screened the tops of my ponds, they have always been right under windows so we could easily look at them and DH would have a fit if he couldn't see the fish.

Each year the oak leaf drop seems to get worse and local landscapers say they have never seen anything like this year. We are blowing our deck at least twice a day and I am afraid much of that goes into the pond.

I have seen the fish eat the pollen, you see them scooping it up during the yellow season. I wonder if too much of that could be harmful.

Must admit I'd never heard of the ammonia spike due to oak leaves and flowers in the water. My pond is the same as yours Alice - the bottom is totally covered with oak leaves all the time despite my efforts and netting. I've never cleaned it. Yet my fish live - I've had the same 8 or 9 goldfish in there for years. My problem with the big leaf drop and flowers is that they clog up the filter (which has a skimmer system like a swimming pool ) and the pump slows down a lot so I worry about aeration. Big mess to clean that filter and get things running again!

I wonder if it's anything to do with the plants taking up the ammonia fast enough so it doesn't get to toxic levels. I have tons of plants - too many really, including a lot of water iris in my pond which are great water filters and also pickerel weed. They are usually growing well by the time the oak leaves start to drop. I also have a plant of your lovely Teacup alocasia that you gave me years ago in there, although the raccoons tipped it over in the winter and it's not looking too great just now. Hm, I have a couple more divisions of that going, maybe I'll just put a new one in.

There's always something . . .

We had a very similar sitaution with raccoons! We have have a large preformed pond, and in the past had never had any problems with predators. Only occaisonal geese hanging out and making a mess. We came out one morning to find all of our potted water lillies missing and the pond a muddy mess.

It turns out the racoons were using them to stand on so they could grab fish.And the pots were knocked off of the "plant shelves" and into the deeper portion. We lost several medium size koi over 3 consecutive nights. Even without the plants on them the plant shelves basically gave the raccoons a perfect fishing spot. So they may have actually just knocked them off to make things easier.

We went to the local garden center and purchased a mesh pond net to go over the top and placed several large pond rocks around the perimeter to keep it secure and taut over the top of the pond. The first night there were no problems, but a few days later we came out to find the net half off and in the water, several of the rocks in the bottom of the pond, and the potted plants knocked off again. But luckily no missing fish.

We secured it under more of the surrounding rocks and the next morning came out to find the net chewed or ripped through and 1 large koi half eaten on the lawn a few feet away from the pond. So we went to another garden center to find a different racoon-proof option. It turned out they had recently had major raccoon problems themseves despite being in a much more urban area, and the mesh nets or metal chicken wire didnt stop them either.

They told us that they had been so frustrated from so many missing fisht that they were tempted to use live traps and take the raccoons them "somewhere" from where they would never come back if you catch my drift. Instead they said they used alligator decoys which they normally to sold to scare ducks and geese away from pools and ponds. Similar to these: http://www.gardenandpatiohomeg... And they worked for the raccoons too even though we don't have alligators around here.

We went with one with glowing eyes for extra emphasis, and since we've added "Mr. Toothy" as our daugher calls him, no more raccoon problems. We also haven't had and ducks or geese either. He has worked well since we didn't like the idea of a net or anything else blocking the view of our pond so much.

To comment on the oak leaves mentioned above, I've heard they are dangerous too, but we have a ton of oak leaves in our pond every fall from an adjacent tree and never have had a problem yet. So it might be a myth.

Our pond is dug into the ground with a rubber sheet liner so we can do this, but my husband reconfigured the pond so that there are no shallow edge shelfs. This has eliminated about 95% of the raccoon visits. We still use the netting. We can get herons and egrets. Maybe once in six weeks the netting will be messed with by raccoons, but no fish have been taken. The pond is about 16 inches deep.