Pond to aquaruim for winter

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

Reddog80p

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Oct 27, 2006
Messages
17
Hi all,

I'm in Northern Illinois. I have just decided that I don't want to risk leaving my outdoor pondfish (two koi about 7",and 20 comets 3-4") outside for the winter as my ponds are only 24" deep. I have a dual pond setup, the uper pond has a waterfall then spills into the lower pond where my pump is, I also have an external bio-filter that feeds the waterfall. The ponds are about 500 gallons each. I know my ponds are ok, nitrogen cycle wise as my fish and plants are healthy and I test my waterand it has been fine all year. Now I've "borrowed" an aquarium from a friend for the winter. I believe is a 55 gallon tank. It is 48" wide 21" tall and 12.5 " deep. It has a aqua-clear 200 power filter (plastic box with foam and activated carbon insert that has a spill over), 2 air pumps (elite802,elite800 - one is 2500cc the other is 1500 cc), a tronic 200w heater, and some sort of light blue rubber necklace looking airstone?
Do I need to use all of this stuff? and is enough for that load of fish? I attached a pic of all the stuff. Any comments/suggestion welcomed. Thank you,

Reddog80p
 

Attachments

  • aqua_848.jpg
    aqua_848.jpg
    242.2 KB · Views: 27
that is alot of fish to keep in a 55, but you could do it with water changes every other day. No heater needed, but is recommended to keep a contant temperature(set it at about 68-70)/ Good call with the air pumps, goldies use up alot of O2. Could you get another filter for double filtration?? that would be perfect.

good call bring the fish inside. With a 2' pond they would most likely not live.
 
Yea, a 55 will be really crowded for all the comets, not to mention the 2 kois. Rather than keeping the temp at 68, you can save yourself a lot of work if you can let the fish hibernate in that tank. If you have a cold (but not freezing) place for the tank - say a constant 40-50F all winter - you can let the fish safely hibernate.

Since you don't feed the fish during hibernation, you would save a lot of water changes. Plus you won't have to massively overfilter just to keep the fish happy in such a small setup. (The AC 200 is too small IMO, I'd go for a canister of 400+ gph in addition.)

An alternative, if you have the room, is to get a 100-200 gal container (people use feed troughs, or you can build something out of 2x4's & pond liner) to over winter the fish. You would use your existing pond pump & biofilter so the cost would not be too much.
 
How many fish do you guys think the 55 gal tank w/ the aquaclear 200 would safely handle, I would be keeping the 2 7" Koi in there for sure, but I can "donate" some of the comets to a freind who has a deeper pond, where they can winter over with no problems, The comets are first year as I bought them "feeder" size. I was also wondering if I could bring in anchacris, and my parrots feather from my established pond outside and plant it in the gravel? Would this cause any problems? I plan on filling the tank with "clean" tap water and adding dechlor before introducing plants then eventually the fish. I still have to do some research on establishing the nitrogen cycle, as I did in my pond outside. I don't have alot of time as the temps around here are getting pretty cold at night 20's and 30's lately with highs in the 40-50's during the day. I attached a pic of my pond to the posting (it's an old pic when the pond was about 1 month old)

Thanks for the feedback,

Reddog80p
 

Attachments

  • aquapond_102.jpg
    aquapond_102.jpg
    197.2 KB · Views: 30
I actually woudent recommend the hibernation thing.

just too complicated IMO

I would say the 2 koi could safely be in the 55 over the winter. Why not gett a large rubbermaid bin for the goldies?
 
You are going to have a fun winter doing water change upon water change. I really recommend you get rid of the koi before they get huge. They can grow over 4' when they have enough nutrition. IMO you don't even have enough room in those ponds for 20 comets.
 
WaterPond said:
I actually woudent recommend the hibernation thing.

just too complicated IMO

If you keep the fish outside in a deeper pond, they would be naturally hibernating ... so all you are doing is replicating the conditions indoors. The trick is finding a place with constant cool temp inside.
 
How big are the ponds? My thought to make the whole thing a little more simple, if you can, would be to build a "greenhouse" over the ponds for the winter. This would also allow for a small space heater if you wanted to use one to keep the temp above freezing and maybe higher if you wanted to. It is a lot more effort but alot of people do it around here because the amount of rain we get floods their ponds if they don't cover them and then the fish decide to go sight seeing. Very simple design and can easily be stored for the summer as the walls come apart with lag bolts and the ceiling is usually 4 sections.

500 gallons sounds large enough for Koi as I have seen them kept very well in 250 gallon setups and they were over 2 feet long. The ponds look to be 8-10 feet long and 4-6 feet wide so shouldn't be too small, for the Koi. The Comets will out grow it very fast and they will need a huge area as I have seen comets get to 8 pounds and 18 inches long in 150 gallon ponds. That is assuming the racoons didn't eat them first!

Maybe two Koi and 6 Comets once the comets get larger would be about the max but this is my guess as I can only go from what I have seen.
 
yeah I decided to keep them outside I Built a half greenhouse from the fence coming down at a 45 degree angle over the ponds, put all the fish in the upper pond and added a floating heater "de-icer" and a bubbler about 12" below the surface. There were actually only 16 comets that I counted and the two koi plus about 5 itty bitty fry that I threw in there also, they will probably end up being a snack. I completely vaccumed all the crap off the bottom so the decomposing would be minimal. Now I have a 55 gallon inside that I can fill with other fish, sounds like a fun winter.

Thanks for all the advice/comments,

Reddog80p
 
Back
Top Bottom