Sponsor a wild carp

6 December 2024

Could you sponsor a wild carp? Saving and rehoming a baby carp costs us £2.50 per fish. A donation of £25.00 will see 10 carp saved, nurtured for three years, and relocated to a lovely new home. Here’s what it funds:

Our baby carp go on quite a journey. They’re born wild (never through artificial stripping of eggs and milt from parent fish, as with commercial carp production). Presently all our carp are rescued from Llyngwyn, a famous wild carp water that’s suffering from agricultural pollution.

The carp fry are encouraged to swim into little nets baited with bread, then we carry them to oxygenated tanks and transport them 90 miles to our rearing facility in north Wales. Here, they’re kept in large tanks containing filtered and well-oxygenated water.

We feed the baby carp up to four times a day with 2mm pellets and – due to the waste they produce – change 1000 litres of water every other day. They will stay in the rearing tanks for up to three months.

While we’re looking after the carp, we’re preparing our fry ponds so that they’re full of natural food and netted to protect the baby carp from birds that might eat them, such as cormorants, herons and kingfishers.

The carp are transferred to the fry ponds, then spend a year eating a mixture of natural food and pellets fed by us. They will grow to about 4 inches long.

The following winter, the carp are moved to larger stock ponds where they will spend another 2-3 years growing to about 3lb – large enough to avoid being eaten by kingfishers and herons. (Their growth rate is much slower than with modern carp, which could be four times this size).

After this, we find permanent homes for them – typically conservation pools where the landowner signs an agreement whereby no other type or strain of carp, koi or goldfish will be introduced to the water.

And then the carp are free to live out their lives, safely protected and with their heritage strain intact. All thanks to the support you provided.

Llyngwyn, where our baby carp are born. It looks beautiful but the water is polluted by phosphates caused by intensive chicken farming in the Wye valley.

One of the baby carps’ parents. This classically-shaped Llyngwyn wildie could be 20 years old.

In September, the baby carp (that were spawned in June) are 1-2 inches long. They are caught in crayfish traps baited with bread. (The nets contain funnel entrances that allow the fish to swim in but not out.)

The fry are transferred to specially constructed nets and held there for a couple of days until we arrive with the transport tanks.

The baby carp are placed in buckets and then carried to the transport tanks.

The fry are allowed to settle in the transport tank, which is then gently filled with water so that it doesn’t slosh about too much in transit.

The aerator is turned on, supplying plenty of oxygen to the fry.

Safely aboard Fennel’s pickup truck, the little carp are transported 90 miles over a steady two-hour journey to the rearing tanks.

Once at their destination, the carp are transferred to the rearing tanks.

Once in the rearing tanks, the fish receive plenty of oxygenation, fresh water, and filtration to keep them healthy. They are fed up to four times a day, any more produces nitrate spikes from their urine and faeces which is detrimental to the fish.

The little carp are moved on at the earliest opportunity. This is usually between 6-12 weeks, by which time they have taken on a beautiful pewter-gold colour from the clear water.

One of the Wild Carp Trust’s spring-fed fry ponds, ready to have its protective netting adding and receipt of little carp.

After a year in the fry pond, the two summer (C2) carp will be about 4 inches long.

The carp are then transferred to one of our larger stock ponds. They will remain in here for a couple of years, until they’re big enough to avoid predation by herons, kingfishers, and other carp!

After a year in the larger stock pond, the three-summer (C3) carp are growing well. We’ve found that they grow deep and then long, almost as though the head takes a while to catch up with the body.

After another year or two, the carp are big enough to be stocked into our conservation pools. From here they will settle and eventually spawn, and the whole cycle will begin again.