2007 Outdoor Pool Spawnings

I have spent the last couple three weekends cleaning out the various pools, tanks and barrels scattered around my home. Contrasting with last year, this year i have found lots of juvis and their parents in most of the containers, yet oddly this year i did the least amount of fussing with them. Just plenty of plants and structure. Lots of Golden Ear Topminnows mixed in with dozens of cute little black and white patterned Flag Fish. My biggest suprise is a 250 gallon pool buried in the ground that has yielded about 50 Pygmy Killies, Omata a longtime fav fish. I brought in about half of them in case a hard winter takes out the pool population. An oddity to that pool is that it was filled w/ squirming mosquito larva and all kind of other water microbugs. Now i know where those biting mosquitoes were coming from during this long dry summer! I thought for sure any fish would keep mosquito larva in check but wonder about these Pygmy Killies, if they can do the job. Too gentle? I'm gonna have to add a species of fish to the pool that is winter hardy and will not eat those delicate Omata. So far im at a loss for a choice.

In the cement pond i had spawn nearly a hundred surface skimming Eastern Starhead Topminnows, pit digging Stonerollers, Longear Sunfish guarding nests ( too many! ), a few Southern Red Bellied Dace, fewer Northern Studfish, and a couple species of Shiners that are still a bit to small to ID tho i suspect they are White Tails and Tri Colors. All the River Chubs are now at spawning size and im hoping that next year i will be able to observe some horny headed mound building in the gravel below the waterfall. A problem im having is i will see hundreds of fry while snorkeling in the spring but in a few weeks they will be predated away by i suspect every minnow, shiner and sunfish that swims and is hungry. I need to create some kind of screened refuge but cant come up with a plan that is practical.

Anyway im curious how other folks outdoor tanks have yielded and is why i started this topic post. What yielded, where are you and what were the conditions? Any suprises?

Casper

My roommate has a small pond in his back yard (at his parent's house) more or less for decoration. He put Bluefin Killifish, Sailfin Mollies, Least Killifish, and Swamp Darter in there. All yielded results. He lives in Northwestern Ohio. I helped him harvest the pond, due to the fact that he'll be draining it because he'll be doing major reconstruction on it next spring.
*The Bluefin Killifish had really good colors after spending the spring/summer outside. Much better than I've gotten them to show in an aquarium. Now that I have the most colorful male in an aquarium indoors, it seems to be losing it's color. On all these fish, I'm not sure the original number of fish put into the pond (nor does he), but he assured me that he put in a lot fewer fish than we harvested. Overall, the Bluefin Killifish did really well outside for the summer.
*The Sailfin Mollies were harvested in small numbers. Only one large male and female were collected when we emptied the pond. Maybe this is due to interspecie competition...? Also, only a few young ones were seen.
*Least Killifish really flourished outside for the spring/summer. They are very tiny and they are live-bearers, so you can imagine that tons of them were present, especially since this pond was covered with aquatic vegetation (not algae or duckweed either). One odd thing that I noticed though, is that almost the entire harvest was female. I'm not sure that I saw any males at all. This brings me to question whether that's something that's common with live-bearing fish when the weather gets colder if the males die off after fertilizing the females.
*The Swamp Darters were a pleasant surprise because my roommate vaguely remembers putting them in there. I understand they are somewhat difficult to sex. So, he must've gotten lucky by getting some females in there because we got 8 or 9 young of year darters in there.
Overall, a success story. I think I'll be trying Creek Chubsucker in a small outdoor pond next spring.

-Nate

I told you Casper, just leave it alone and nature did it's thing! Glad to hear you had such great success! Any chance I could get another pair of starheads or goldens from this years crop? How'd the rainbow's do?

Tyler may have some floating refuges left over from a barrens topminnow expirement. They worked very well for juvie barrens' as cover while excluding a larger/predatory fish. They are quite small, float, and easily made. I'd imagine a larger one maybe with a mop or clump of floating vegetation would work wonders to help increase your recruitment.

I told you Casper, just leave it alone and nature did it's thing! Glad to hear you had such great success! Any chance I could get another pair of starheads or goldens from this years crop? How'd the rainbow's do?

Tyler may have some floating refuges left over from a barrens topminnow expirement. They worked very well for juvie barrens' as cover while excluding a larger/predatory fish. They are quite small, float, and easily made. I'd imagine a larger one maybe with a mop or clump of floating vegetation would work wonders to help increase your recruitment.

last year i sent 10 packages of fish to folks, excess spawnings of the cement pond, but i dont have anymore of the styro boxes i made. i do have plenty of starheads tho. too many. i would like to get a supply of those small medical drug coolers ive seen.
i have finally figured a simple refuge for next year's shiner spawn. im going to take a roll of 24" black plastic semi rigid mesh and make a 4' diameter 2' tall hoop that will rest on the gravel substrate. the fry will be able to seek refuge in there and it will also keep water lettuce refuge from floating around the cement pond. simple solution... what i always look for.

if i can come up w/ some coolers i will ship some of these fish.

those flags are cool. just a bunch of plants in a bare bottom tank. no sand or gravel to deal with.

Casper,

My mom gets B12 shots sent to her bi weekly I think and they come in the small boxed styro containers. I actually have one in my truck, boxed, with a breather bag and ready to go. Tyler was going to send me some of my flagfish spawn but not many survived the summer. She keeps the foam boxes for me or sends me plants from their aquariums every now and then. If you want I can tell her to start holding onto them again and ship them to you.

I've always been a bit jealous after reading some of these pond threads, so my wife & I have been digging this big hole out back. I think it's about 5 feet deep at the deepest spot now, but then there are shelves around it at shallower depths. When it looks right, we'll finish it off with a liner and fill 'er up (though not during this drought!)

No, I don't yet know what I'm going to put in there. I like sunfishes, madtoms, cats... not so much into killies... we'll see where it goes.

Hey Casper,

Nice to see you are having good success in your "cement pond". I look forward to seeing it again some day. Went down to Louisiana for Thanksgiving but did not even bring a dip net nor a bucket. I went to relax. I did some rod and reel fishing and I am always amazed at the more intense color in the Longears down there. Even ones that are like three or four inches long, the males have intense color. Maybe next time I go I will bring inverter and all other gizmos and bring some fish back.

Thanks for sharing your experiences with you multi outdoor containers and their great success. I enjoyed reading about all you fishies.

Daniel