My first container pond for tropical fish was a necessity. I sometimes visit petcos and on one occasion they had paradise fish on sale for a $1. I always read good things about this fish and had some extra tank space at the time so thought what the hell. What i hadn't taken into consideration at the time was lack of quarantine space. Fortunately the I had set my fancy goldfish in a pond so their pond, normally an indoor one was available.
So i filled the container with tank water tucked it under a bush. tossed in some floating plants and said good luck guys. Soon after all the gold fish died. I had set the container up underneath my car port, so it was protected from the worse of the sun but it was still on cement so i feel it just over heated. I left the container set up to grow mosquito larvae and daphnia. The feeding of the paradise fish became sporadic, once a week at best. water changes were really just top offs. They were out there from July until mid September.
I started breaking down the pond, I found the adults fat and simply radiant with color. More surprisingly i found twenty five fry that were about an inch long or so. They were fat bellied and in good color. I moved the adults into my twenty hex. They spawned once in the house, no fry survived. Within the month the parents were dead. Probably due to the Angelfish.
I had moved the fry into a spare five gallon, filled with pond water and some plants from the pond. One thing i noticed immediately was all the little critters scurrying around. My freshly set up five gallon freshwater had about as much biodiversity as a salt water tank. The fry were large enough to take chunks out of shrimp pellets and eat flake. as they grew the little critters disappeared. Once the critters disappeared, the growth of the fry slowed, despite an increase in manufactured food intake.
I picked out two females to rear up, giving them each a 2 gallon, planted tank to grow up in. Ninety percent water changes each week and just an airstone for water movement. Over feeding of tubifex worms and blakworms kept a small population of inverts prowling around the dirt bottom tanks. A picked out a brilliant male from a local shop and set him up the same way.
This year i set the pond again, putting the trio out with 4 paleatus cories around memorial day weekend. Despite two unexpected nights down to 45 degrees, the fish are thriving, the male having already built a nest and hatched a clutch for both females. The cories have scattered eggs along tank. More importantly all the fish are already showing color improvement and bulk up. i feed twice a week, thawed, crushed prawn and some sinking pellets. The rest of their food is from whatever grows in the pond or falls in. i purposely set it up under a tree for this reason. What changes are just top offs for evaporation, with a little over flow. Filter is a powerhead that moves water from the lower container to the upper and then over flows back. Duck weed runs rampant.
What we have learned from saltwater tanks is that biodiversity is important in aquatic environments, marine tanks are crawling with copepods and other critters that scavenge and fish and corals eat. Freshwater tanks, do to how they are set up, using always sterile materials, lack this diversity. Even when introduced to the tank, freshwater critters have a hard time finding a niche to survive in. The summer pond allows our fish to benefit from being in a more natural environment, full of more natural prey items and algae , while simultaneously reducing our work load.
The other benefit is size of containers. For instance, I would not house my paradise fish in 2 gallons of water all year round, but i have to concerns housing them in such a way for the winter, knowing that from may till October, they'll have more then adequate space to roam. That owner of larger fish, who might just might be meeting tank requirement for a species, could perhaps use a summer pond to house the fish. This would ensure, for the summer at least, the fish is more then adequately housed.
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