Interesting Fish for a Pond

IonBaller07

Lul, does your dad happen to like fishing, I bet he wants his own personal trout lake.

MBilyeu

A Common Pleco, and I should have taken him out before I put the syno in, but I thought that he would survive a couple days no problem. The day before I was to take the pleco to my parents house, he ripped apart the syno, as plecos are well known to do. Well there was $30 down the drain.

DragonFish

Well the pond is roughly about 30'x30' and the depth ranges from around 5'5" to 2', I'd assume thats big enough for about five+ or so =3 Frank I'd estimate at around 20" and he seems to look rather small when sitting at the bottom xD

xD Thanks ;3 I'm rather fond of it^^

xDDD I bet thats it, hes a big fishing fan ;3

redpaulhus

How deep is it ?
Any filtration system ?
Any oxygenation system ?
Is it shaded or in direct sunlight ?
Any pond plants ?

Offhand - without a seriously large filter system, or some tremendous depth (ie a huge water volume) - I suspect that that pond won't support Koi well or for long.
A pond without a filter system of some sort (biological or vegetative) is basically one big fishbowl - and Koi are tremendously messy.
Even 3 or 4 adult Goldfish will probably severely tax the water quality of a pond that size if it doesn't have a filter.
If it gets some halfway decent sun, you'll have green soup and have trouble seeing your fish.

I would check your area yellow pages (or google) for pond supply shops (or aquarium shops that do alot of pond business) - different fish are legal (or illegal) in different states, and they'll know what a) is legal and b) will survive thru the winter (this will depend alot on the pond depth).

In my area, I usually recommend the pond be at least 3ft deep if Koi and Goldfish are going to overwinter in the pond. I've had a number of customers over the past 10+ years who "got by" with 18-24" deep, until a bad winter a few years ago killed everything in pretty much all of the ponds shallower than 36" (and killed some fish in poorly maintained deeper ponds too).

Bare minimum I would add before adding Koi would be a large biofilter (commercial or home-made) and an oxygenating water feature (waterfall, fountain, etc). I would also invest in the proper hardware for performing water changes - contrary to popular misconception, ponds need water changes just like aquariums, especially with Koi. Other optional add-ons - UV sterilizers, bio-bead or sand filters, etc - would increase the odds of seeing the fish in the summer.

I would never ever ever recommend gambusia - "mosquito fish" for anything - they really don't eat many mosquito's, and they are a nasty little invasive species in many sub-tropical climes where they were introduced to eat mosquito's and proceeded to eat the native fish that were doing a better job on the mosquito's already.

Lupin

Why does the pond look unlined to me? No pond liners and simply mud? I would not bother putting any fish in there at all unless it is lined and operated with heavy filtration system.

fish999

Mosquito fish and tilapia... you can eat tilapia grown in a pond. :)

finsNfur

ITA with Redpaulhus and Lupin. You need some kind of filtration for the pond. And during a draught, without a liner, your pond could entirely dry up. If the OP doesn't intend to add any kiind of filtration, his options are really limited. I wouldn't begin to consider any kind of large fish like Koi or trout to the pond as is. And even with proper filtration and a liner, I don't think it's big enough for several trout or Koi. There are beautiful, multi-colored varieties of hardy Goldfish though, I have some really pretty sarassas Goldfish in my pond.