Anyone keep other pond fish besides koi and goldfish?

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Reefmonkey

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Jul 15, 2005
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Location
Houston TX
Who here keeps other fish besides the usual pondfish (koi, goldfish, etc). Does anyone keep tropicals? How about North American native fishes?
 
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
 
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
 
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.
 
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).
 
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. :evil: 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.
 
We have golden orfe (aka "Tuffies" at the LFS), 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, IMHO 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.
 
Reefmonkey said:
Who here keeps other fish besides the usual pondfish (koi, goldfish, etc). Does anyone keep tropicals? How about North American native fishes?
i keep freshwater stingrays in my indoor pond about 450gal?
 
I saw that you live in Texas, you can probably get away with the tropicals and some NA native fishes due to the climate. I have also read about people keeping sharks (yes, I said it) in outdoor saltwater ponds after very CAREFUL preparation and measurements.

BTW, this is my first post/visit to the site in A YEAR!!! IT is GREAT to be back!!!!!
 
I have 6 koi, 2 goldfish and 2 albino sturgeon and 1 sturgeon (UK)

just thought some 1 would care?.
 
Red-eared slider (turtle) in parent's outdoor pond in Southern California - well, it's actually a hard-plastic kiddie pool...but will probably be changed to one of those in-ground pre-formed ponds after my next visit.
 
pond fish other than goldfish Rosy Reds!

I keep a bunch of rosy reds in my various pond/water gardens. the 180 gallon stock tank has about 15 rosy reds, who have just spawned twice, producing a bunch of offspring, some I guess to be about a week old and some maybe a few days old now, along with 2 adult goldfish and about 5 surviving goldfish babies.

In my 90-100 gallon brick planter water garden, I have one adult goldfish (about 4 inches and maybe two years old), and 6 rosy reds, no spawn yet that I can see. And in my 24 gallon planter water garden I have two baby goldfish from the bigger pond, and 3 rosy reds.

Yyou can buy the rosy red minnows from your local fish store (I got mine at Petsmart) as feeder fish for about 11 or 12 cents apiece. My first batch did well, and bred immediately, the second batch for the brick planter was sick and they all died but one, but I put some of the hardier ones from the back pond in there and they're doing fine. I'd recommend isolating the rosies in an aquarium for a week or so if possible to see if they're sick, then put them in the pond. They tolerate water from just above freezing to near 100 degrees in Texas August heat ( I live in Austin, and some of mine survived all year in the 24 gallon planter, from the surface being frozen over to the 110 degree days in August).

They're almost as pretty as goldfish, breed well on their own, and are very hardy. Love them!

Coyote
 
I've kept guppies outside and had tons of them...but then I forgot to move them inside and it got cold.

I had about 50 dead guppies....but I found one that survived!

You can also keep white cloud mtn. minnows out side. They are very cool and will reproduce in the plants, like I have a lot of hornwort and they will breed in there.
 
friend of mine keep an assortment of african cichlids in her outdoor pond during summer.
Swims in it and calls it "Diving lake malawi on a budget"
Seems she has removed the pics from her host so theres no point posting the link up.

Anything is possible really

~Matty
 
noncentric said:
Red-eared slider (turtle) in parent's outdoor pond in Southern California - well, it's actually a hard-plastic kiddie pool...but will probably be changed to one of those in-ground pre-formed ponds after my next visit.

How do you keep the turtle from wandering off? Or does he simply not want to?
 
I live down here in Harlingen,TX...right on the Rio Grand River and I'm thinking of doing a pond on my patio and stocking it with some Texas cichlids which are native to the Rio Grande. I think that they would do way better climate wise than any "cold water" fish....it does not really get very cold down here. It would be easier to heat the small pond that I'm thinking of doing thatn it would be to chill it!!!
 
derrickmickens said:
Reefmonkey said:
Who here keeps other fish besides the usual pondfish (koi, goldfish, etc). Does anyone keep tropicals? How about North American native fishes?
i keep freshwater stingrays in my indoor pond about 450gal?

Unfortunately freshwater stingrays are illegal in Texas, so that's out. I ended up setting up the pond with 2 jack dempseys, 2 green severums, and a green terror, as well as a school of buenos aires tetra. Oh, and about a gazillion gulf coast toad tadpoles that were uninvited, but not unappreciated.
 
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