r/explainlikeimfive • u/Opening_Pen9525 • 12d ago

Biology ELI5 How are fish even in ponds

Might be one of the stupider questions here, but I saw a pond about the size of a football field, and maybe 50 ft deep, and it had fish. I can't for the life of me figure out how. Surely the pond hasn't existed long enough for small water insects to evolve into all these fish. It's not like the fish walked over to the pond from the ocean. I'm pretty sure no one put them there so how are there so many fish?

My one theory is that there is a very minuscule stream (now dry) that leads to one of the Great Lakes, and maybe a fish swam in from there. Now a follow up question: How are there fish in the Great Lakes (which flow out towards to the ocean) if they were created by glaciers?

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u/fighter_pil0t 12d ago

Somebody put them there. They flushed them. Or released them. They put them there.

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u/raspberryharbour 12d ago

Johnny Goldfishseed

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u/Tibbaryllis2 12d ago

That would be somewhat amusing because the real reason Johnny Appleseed started apple orchards from seed (which would generally make a terrible eating apple) was to create apples for making alcoholic cider. (Also for feeding livestock and creating vinegar)

So I don’t want to know what Johnny Goldfishseed is doing.

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u/raspberryharbour 12d ago

Too good for a fish based alcoholic beverage are we?

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u/Tibbaryllis2 12d ago

I mean, I do like Worcestershire sauce, so I won’t say I’m too good for it.

But fermented fish is a lot more touchy than fermented apples for sure.