Green slime - Tinca tinca

The green tench (Tinca tinca) is native to us in Europe. Tench are relatives of carp and fit well in large garden ponds. There they live mainly bottom-oriented at the bottom of the water. In the mud there the useful pond fish look for food - mosquito larvae, insects, crustaceans, plant remains. Green slugs like to eat pesky water snails and graze on algae cover. In large ponds they do not need extra feeding, but they can always be provided with a high-quality goldfish food if food is scarce.

Green slugs grow slowly. They grow from 20 to about 60 cm in the garden pond. They are rather dark olive greenish in color, their fins are darker than the color of the body. Tench are considered good sport fish for anglers and tasty food fish. Green tench are sociable schooling fish and need a group size of 5-10 specimens. The garden pond must be correspondingly large - 1000 liters per green tench is the minimum size.

Because the green tench is native to our region, the fish can easily survive the winter in a sufficiently deep garden pond. They sink to the bottom of the pond and fall into cold torpor there. The pond should therefore be at least 1-1.3 m deep so that the pond water does not freeze completely during the cold winter months. An ice freezer ensures a free water surface and thus good oxygen exchange.

Because green slugs depend on good water quality in the pond, a pond filter is especially useful for heavily stocked ponds. If water conditions are poor, young green slugs tend to foul. Then the pond fish remain small. The pond for green slips can be planted very well - green slips like weedy waters and tend not to eat aquatic plants. Good pond planting greatly benefits water quality.

Tench can also reproduce in the garden pond. The females lay their sticky eggs in large numbers on the aquatic plants in the pond during mating - so good pond planting is good for them to reproduce.