Spawn of Different Kinds

It is good to be able to send out a report on the garden which doesn't involve unpleasant death. Trying to get a good view of one of the fish who seems to have been in the wars yet again - it's the one who has been in and out of the quarantine tank with illness and then apparently savaged by something-or-other more than once, why it's always him who gets damaged I'm not sure - I spotted some unexpected new arrivals. There is one frog in this composite photo, but in fact two are present; and then there are two new fish! The pale one is very, very tiny, barely an inch in length, while the black one is perhaps a little less than twice that size. How long have they been there? I only noticed the adults spawning in the Spring a year ago, but can the pale one really be as much as a year old? Given the disparity in their sizes, can the large one be as much as two years in age, and been lurking in the murk of the pond all that time? I would have thought that the more likely explanation is that the adults spawned early one morning when I didn't notice, and these fish are the result of a Spring and a Summer round of spawning. Either way, they've done pretty well to get this far, surviving in a relatively small pond with four adults rampaging around. Goldfish are very bad parents, and happily gobble up their own little fry when they catch them. Apparently most small goldfish go through a black stage before they turn orange, but the only other fish I've ever seen spawned in the pond didn't - it stayed pale, like the little one in this picture, and never developed much pigment.

It's often said that goldfish grow to fit their numbers and environment, which is sort-of true, but they shouldn't - they have a natural size and only fail to achieve it if they're constrained, meaning they're not very happy. The ones I have ought to get to about seven inches in length, and the older among them have, but if I want to keep these two as well, I may have to get a bigger pond!