I couldn't believe this.
 

When we were little kids my mom used to let us get goldfish ever so often, but we would always quit taking care of them so she'd release them into a pond we have by our house.
Fast forward about 10 years. I got back into tanking, and didn't know what to do with 2 goldfish I used to break in my now warm (unhappy goldfish territory) tank. So I decided to release them into that same old pond. I was a little skeptical and went to check it out to see how good of fish territory it was. Swimming around of the middle of the pond is MR GIANT KING DADDY GOLDFISH SENIOR! Seriously this goldfish out there was probably 12 inches long and just a fatty! I guess it's a pretty decent environment!

As cool as that is, there are a lot of environmental ramifications for releasing non-native fish into the area. Please find an alternative next time you need to get rid of fish, even coldwater ones!

Check out habitattitude.net

Shoot, I didn't even realize. :shock: Thanks for the heads up. :oops:

Next time you can use danios or white clouds to cycle the tank and they're pretty enough to keep or you can bring them back to the LFS (they probably won't refund you but oh well).

Most ponds are closed systems and are not a natural occurrence and most are man made. Be as noted, be careful releasing non-native species anywhere. Fish such, as snakeheads, have been dumped in areas and have out competed native fish for forage and food.

this tends to be a serious forum, but to be completely honest, nothing would be cooler to me than going to my local pond to do a little fishing and seeing a good sized snake head coming at me........that would be cool as shit.

Go fish the Potomac at Great Falls, and you may well have such a cool experience. It's a much less cool experience if you are out there to catch a bass or a trout, though.

You caught a snakehead at Great Falls? Yeesh. Nasty looking fish.

No, but I have heard that some have been caught there.

i would still think it would be awesome to see a snakehead in the wild......just as long I wasn't in waders trying to catch trout.

My friend kept a snakehead in his 120 and i loved it. Thing died when he went on a trip for 3 days only to come back and find it had broken the hood and jumped out......we were hopeful that it survived since it can for a little while out of water, but nope it was dead.

I wouldn't mind being in my bass boat and seeing an adult breach to take a bird out of a low lying limb.