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Fish ponds

Started by Guest_jetajockey_* , Aug 19 2014 02:21 AM

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4 replies to this topic

#1 Guest_jetajockey_*

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Posted 19 August 2014 - 02:21 AM

Okay guys so I grow a lot of aquatic/semi aquatic plants, which has led me to building a new pond setup for them. This whole setup has been concocted mostly based around availability of materials, so it's changed quite a bit. As it sits, though, it's going to have 4 ~125g containers that eventually drain into a ~250g container.

The plus side to this is that it gives me a natural division to be able to breeding native fish species in.

My short term goal is to popularize and provide native fish to the aquarium world by maintaining and propagating a few select species. A longer term goal is to start a selective breeding program and get some good strains going as well, but that's an obvious long term effort.

So I have this setup (still working on it, but will be complete soon), as well as around 3 dozen smaller tanks indoors to work out of.

So my question is, what species would you recommend? I enjoy caring for pygmy sunfish, and I know I can maintain a population indoors, but outdoors?

My other hangup is what kind of species I can mix together and still maintain/generate the population. I'm thinking least killies and pygmy sunfish will work fine. Pygmy killies should also, right? I don't know how predatory they are.

I'm not going to bother with Gambusia.

I'll most likely try to get a good colony of fundulus cingulatus.

I love enneacanthus sp. and would absolutely love to get a group of blackbanded to maintain and breed, but that's probably more of a pipe dream due to their scarcity. Bluespotted are fairly common here, though. I also like dollar sunfish and orangespotted sunfish, but all of the sunfish are going to likely be in tanks where they can spawn in peace and I may just use the outside containers as growouts.

I can most likely overwinter most species outside as long as I run a heater during the really cold snaps that we sometimes have. They aren't for more than a few days at a time so it's pretty manageable.

As you can probably tell, I have a million ideas going on, so any input or advice is welcome!

Work in progress!

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#2 Guest_gerald_*

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Posted 19 August 2014 - 10:08 AM

How about taillight shiner, flagfin shiner, sailfin/metallic shiners (Ocala and Alafia strains especially nice) ...?

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#3 Guest_jetajockey_*

Guests

Posted 19 August 2014 - 01:47 PM

Ahhh yes shiners, I forgot all about them. Flagfins are native to here and I know of a few productive areas, so compiling a nice looking starter colony wouldn't be too difficult. I found some really nice pt.hypselopterus on one of the choctawhatchee feeder creeks, but I've not ventured much more than that yet.

I just need to do some research on breeding them, I've kept them before but have never witnessed any breeding activity.

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#4 Michael Wolfe

Board of Directors

North Georgia, Oconee River Drainage

Posted 19 August 2014 - 04:04 PM

If your willing to go with shiners I might suggest a Cyprinella (dealers choice there, most all of them are pretty nice looking fish). I had them breed for me in outdoor stock tanks here in Georgia.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. - Benjamin Franklin

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#5 Guest_jetajockey_*

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Posted 19 August 2014 - 11:18 PM

I recall seeing some nice ones at the tennessee aquarium not long ago. I'm really trying to focus on just a handful of species so I'm going to narrow my list down as collection time comes closer. I think shiners could eventually be on par with tetras and danios in the hobby, popularity-wise, I know that rainbow shiners have already made an established presence but the pricing on the wholesale lists makes it quite cost prohibitive to the average consumer.