Anyone keep other pond fish besides koi and goldfish?

[Reefmonkey]

Who here keeps other fish besides the usual pondfish (koi, goldfish, etc). Does anyone keep tropicals? How about North American native fishes?

[greenmaji]

My grandmother had some native fish in her pond.. not exactly attractive ones though.. As far as your area is conserned you could keep american flag fish or maybe some sunfish speices.. :P

[acpart]

I have a 40 gallon or so tub pond on my 2nd floor porch. Too small for koi or most goldfish. I have a school of giant danios --started with 6 but now have 7 since one of the 4 babies I found managed to grow up. I now have a whole new crop of hatchlings since I moved a bunch of water lettuce plants to another container and there were fish eggs in the roots. The danios seem to love the pond and are always flitting around but will come to me most of the timeif I agitate the water. Needless to say I can't keep them outside in the Boston area. I'll be bringing the entire pond inside to my kitchen in Sept.-Oct. where they'll get afternoon sun through the deck doors. I don't know yet if I'll need a heater.

Aliza

[Reefmonkey]

In the past I kept sailfin mollies, which are native around here, and golden eared killifish. which are also native, in a tub pond, pretty successfully.

I plan to start my cichlid pond out by putting in sailfin mollies again before I put any cichlids in.

I have kept catfish before, they are pretty hardy.

As well as a Ryunkin (Spelling?) Its a type of goldfish, dunno if that counts.


Just about anything you can catch in a pond or something you can stick in a pond (Like for example you wont find alot of tropical fish in a lake like that)

I have Golden Shiners and Green Shiners, both native minnows, and one longear sunfish in my pond (along with my Comet goldfish). I caught them out of the 1 acre community pond in my neighborhood. Much of the time they are pretty hard to see, but they "flash" some during feeding time, and a LOT when they are in a breeding frenzy. By "flash" I mean they swim to the surface and go sideways so the sun flashes off their super-reflective scales. Pretty cool looking.

I must say though, I took a chance placing wild fish in with my goldies. The possibility of introducing parasites or disease is a chance I took. I have noticed no problems like that, and I put some of the shiners in last summer, some this spring.
If anyone wants to try shiners and can't/won't catch them yourself, you can buy them at any bait shop that sells "minnows" for fishing bait. Baitfish (at least around here) are pretty much always shiners.

[Psybuster]

i have plecos in and the koi doesn't seem to bother them. they get along very well

[Reefmonkey]

You'd probably have the same risk of parasites with bait fish, however that's a risk you'd probably always have with an outdoor pond. Birds and other visitors can always infect a pond. To avoid bringing the parasites in on the fish, you can either quarantine them and prophylacticly treat them, or buy them from some native fish suppliers (which also gets you around having to worry about fish and game dept regs against catching wild fish in some areas).

[honmol]

I keep guppies!!!! But the evil cat kills all of them. Doesn't eat them, just pokes or slashes them so they die a slow and painful death. But they're so pretty and at least mine are very hardy. In my pond, to grow up you have to be strong and smart. I don't even crush flake food for the fry. They have to not be eaten and find a way to eat. They usually survive though.

[Aquathumb]

We have golden orfe (aka "Tuffies" at the [acronym:c8bffcf76f="Local Fish Store"]LFS[/acronym:c8bffcf76f]), shubunkins and have also kept bitterlings in with the koi, faintails, black moors and comets in our pond. All get along no problem. Other than the koi, [acronym:c8bffcf76f="In My Honest Opinion"]IMHO[/acronym:c8bffcf76f] the orfe are really nice. They get big (6") but stay slender like a trout. As they mature they get a yellow / orange color with black spots. A really interesting fish that like to stay in a group.