How to Breed Tropical Fish in Outdoor Mini Ponds [Presentation]

and now it's my pleasure to to introduce a man who needs no introduction in this room Cory McElroy has been a GSA's member since 2009 he's done a lot for the club and including serving on our board of directors and his chairman of the Breeders award program he opened his own friendly local fish store aquarium co-op in Everett in 2013 he's boosted our club membership rolls by becoming a sponsor store and signing up lots and new members right in the shop and he helps to build our local aquarium keeping community by running plant swaps and working with the Washington fish box for him so I'd say let's hear it for Cory everyone can hear me in the back all right I know I've been too scared to speak up sometimes when I couldn't hear but thanks for all showing up on a beautiful night obviously a tiny'mon night out yeah it's really nice but so tonight we're going to talk about mini ponds and the first slide here enjoy nature daily and how that ties into mini ponds is usually I'm only tuned into nature when something weird is going on you know most people have nature at home and they're they don't think about that way you've got a cat you've got a dog you've got you know all these animals and when they do something peculiar like oh I want that similar wild behavior and we tune in then and in when you're doing with mini ponds outside so many factors are coming in and playing in your little world that you're constantly learning and whereas your aquarium you might go well yep fish are doing what they did yesterday the plants are still growing and then it's when the algae blooms that you really tune in and go hey what's going on here so you know the mini ponds we only get a window of three or four months typically here and but it's an intense three or four months of things going on daily so so yeah my goal you know I've got the sign in my shop it's remind me that even though I'm working with animals still like that every day is that take some time and actually you know look at them and appreciate what they are as opposed to yep it's another Cardinal tetra or you know you know a quarry cat something like that and so many ponds are my escape and I hope for some view will be too so and it wouldn't be a talk unless you talk about a trip you've been on or collecting or something like that so I'm going to work that in real quick and it all ties into but what you saw earlier was a little clip from the ala Florida trip that Eric was on I was on and it's a library convention and here we're out collecting fish I'm in search of libraries there are people in search of cichlids and stuff like that and these waterways you can find absolutely anything and it's because when the fish farms flood and they do flood we witness kind of some monsoon weather and select that just goes out and it doesn't come back and so you might be at the equivalent of a Costco parking lot they've got a drainage ditch and back there you're going oh look there's angelfish oh there's plecos there's Oscars and so when you're talking to the locals you go well I'm looking for this fishing like oh well you're gonna have to go to the you know the spend and save over here and right in that ditch in this little mile marker you're going to find this fish and a lot of times you will and but that being said when that big freeze happened a lot of the tropical fish they did have kind of died back and all those ponds so now they're not a hard percent accurate where to go stuff like that but so yeah showing here some of the the foliage and stuff like that you're going to dig around that's where you going to find the fish the same thing you want to provide these little mini ponds so Katie couldn't be here night she's at work and I have to show a picture of her even she gets involved in this in the pond stuff and the goal you know was just to show that we're gonna get the whole family involved and without her I couldn't play with fish all day so you know this is my my ode to her so alright so Armando who was in the video he was kind of the guy that knew where everything was that guy I think if we weren't there he would have been there anyway looking for fish that guy knew everything there was to know and this was in Everglades and I think this was Alligator Alley we were in and when they get there they they tell you okay so there's some things you want to watch out for and you think it's going to be alligators it's not it's the first thing you're going to get heat strokes I could say that that literally takes someone down every year we do this so stay hydrated even though you're in water and then they say the second thing that gets people the time is the fire ants because they're everywhere and so you know I chose to get in the water because you're standing on the bank and if you're on the bank and you don't have a net in your hand your job is to watch for alligators and you see them and they're down the way and you see people pulling up and feed them chickens and stuff like that so they're they're kind of domesticated alligators everyone knows what they are but they say they might even be a little more dangerous because you're not fearing X or going oh yeah you know I feed the chicken here it is you know and look it just you know scampers off and but everyone's want to get someone and you know you know one lose their hand go on ask FINA chicken to a you know a piece of chick it's not even a chicken like here eat just fried chicken it's even worse than that so it's not even a live chicken but so yeah there's all these things you're watching out for and so my goal here was when I was looking for Molly's Wildcat Molly's but also Cathy Olson wanted some Everglades the I the pygmy sunfish are not sunfish I'm drawing a blank anyway so yes so and of course Amano says well you know it's way out there you got to go where all those water hyacinth are and you got to get that net up in there and just bring back a bunch of stuff and so that's what I did I go you know waist-deep and he's like well you know keep an eye out as you're out there you can't really see in those water hyacinth is like you know definitely look we're stepping and stuff like that and so the first thing you know so we're taking stuff out of there the first thing this thing comes up and it's a water scorpion like oh by the way that's thing number for water scorpions you don't wanna get stung by those and I'm like oh glad I know that now you know so that's you know just more and more things are coming out in the video you saw there's little leeches and stuff like that and you know the list of things you don't want to be touching is a mile long but you're searching for one or two things you really want to touch and that's that you know fish are looking for and then there's you know crayfish living all the same and so there I am digging in the back you can see what shirt I'm wearing actually you know all the way in Florida representing the G SAS then there's newts and salamanders and stuff like that and so there's all these things you've got crayfish you've got fish you've got water scorpions alligators and all these are basically leaving this waterway and that's the same thing that's going to happen in your little mini ponds so finally we found some fish that's a little warm mouse cichlid there was a guy that was super happy to be getting those there's some of the mollies I ended up bringing back there and you haven't seen a Molly tell you see it in the sunlight you know as you caught it somehow that Molly is the coolest thing you've ever seen you know it you know you know you think I got it tomorrow yeah but when you catch it something somehow it's a world of difference there for you so the other thing I want to talk about so that was our that was our trip and you know all these little critters are in the water nail cohabitate now this is the other thing I want to talk about tonight along with the mini pawns why they're so important is this is a little drainage ditch in Stanwood and typically this is full of water and so you can see right here there's that's where the water comes in and this was taken about a week ago and about the end of August it might get a little bit dry and there'd still be water here and everything's still be alive but as of three weeks ago this is bone-dry and you know we are in a drought and you know so what used to live in there is all these frogs tons and tons and tons of frogs and that pipe if you go 20 feet kind of in this parking lot is this grating and they're all stuck in a tiny amount of water and you know honestly if I go back today they might not be alive still and so that's when our mini ponds become so important because luckily this pond was about 20 feet in the other direction and this is Andy and he comes the club here is a memory he's got a big white beard does all the bees looks like Santa everyone knows who he is loud and so the 700 gallons on difficult he raises Guppies and white clouds and stuff like that and up here he's got these are actually skylights that he's put up top and that what that'll do is that'll keep the birds from coming down and preying on stuff and I just got like a shower door here and then this is a staging pond right here where he actually puts water in and doesn't use the chlorinator so lets it sit and then he'll drain that in there and the reason he's being so careful this year is if you look right here there's actually a little frog so some of those frogs that were you know basically drying up over here well they might have made their way over there maybe had some help but there's lots of lily pads in here and this is actually one that I had over wintered at my house and when I moved I gave to Andy cuz I never put it I wasn't setting the pond up right away so I gave it to him and the great thing that he's noticed about this and I never noticed I may notice snails use it and some flies will land on it and stuff like that and actually can see that in this little picture here there's you know there's that frog he's loving life and there's some flies mating who knows if they're going to interact there you know make it more fly so someone could eat you know and someone's going to eat him and but what he noticed is that all the all the bees he's got on this property because he's a beekeeper that's what he does they actually need structure to land and drink from the water because they're you know there used to be that huge drainage ditch it's dried up there's nowhere for the bees to go and so now he's got tons of bees landing and using his little mini pond for that so here's some more little tadpoles there's all all evolutions of that frog in this pond they're breeding in there they're you know instead of being gone the goal is that next year it won't be such a drought that we're in and he won't have to intervene and you can see here they're all on the roots of this is water hyacinth and this is actually some water hyacinth that he was able to overwinter which normally you can't but because of those skylights and stuff it kept it just enough just enough frost off that it did they're not the healthiest water less you are not water less water hyacinth you've ever seen but they are alive and that's that was impressive because I've they typically die back every year and you end up buying more and right here so you know he's done a great thing and he saved the frogs great you know but you're saying well you know we're here for fish and I agree so in the same pond he's got red cherry shrimp and taking this picture this is with a cell phone you know this is a week ago and you know I got to shoot through a foot of green water basically and if you can believe it that is the reddest cherry shrimp you're ever going to see it's been sitting under the Sun eating algae and you would say like what grade of shrimp is this what do they call this and it's like well it's just a cherry shrimp that's living the best life possible and that's half the reason you want to do a mini pond is you start getting all these environmental factors like the Sun you get little bugs you get all kinds of leaves falling in they want to eat stuff like that you're going to get much better coloration out of what you do have going in there he's also breeding white clouds and stuff like that so it's not just frog it's got the whole ecosystem just like we saw in Florida this is one of my customers here and they put in a water feature there's actually no pond here they just wanted to put in a place to hear the the water that was their whole thing they own an aquarium so like that but in the summer outside they go well we don't interact so aquarium you know and I wish they talked me over to him put in a nice koi pond or something like that but they just had this installed and what they didn't know what they were getting when they installed this was that it was now the main attraction for all their property all the deer coming in drinks or birds landing all the time they say they just see everything sitting up here and birds a little hopping around so like that it's even attracted the grandkids right here there's actually a plastic Triceratops and so the grandkids come and everyone loves to gather around here because there's all kinds of stuff to look at so you know it did its job and it brings people together and it's not technically a pond they could dig it out a little bit but it is a water source and it is providing water to everything in the drought so all of a sudden stuff's coming out of the Woodworks to get a drink so this is a guy I met after the Florida conference for the libraries and wish I had known him then because apparently like Sunday night after I'm flying home everyone else went to his house in Miami to see this and I didn't know anyone then it was my first conference stuff like that but so this is a fish room but the cool thing about this fish room is all outside nothing's indoors and so it's basically a ton of little mini ponds you can see there's some red sore tails down here and some up there and Carl of Miami swordtails he's not a commercial unit he just only breeds for himself and typically won't sell a fish will only give it to you and stuff like that and it's his release and he makes some of the best sort ales you've ever seen and he was gonna be another picture here so this another look here's his backyard you know he's got palm trees and all kinds of cool stuff but this is his release from his stressful job and so he's winning all these awards at the shows with his sword tales and stuff like that and people ask what a secrets are and he says well you know I feed them pretty well and you know I let him eat a lot of allergy you can see up here is an acrylic tank and you can see it's basically clear to window to look in but everything else covered in algae and that's where all that color is coming from fish and so they're constantly eating bugs and they're eating algae and you know being libraries or natural grazers anyway and they go well you know you're making some of the biggest sword tales we've ever seen you know and he goes well how if you change water and he laughs and he goes well you know when it rains the water gets changed and that's that's true you literally because there's so much algae growing it's scrubbing the water clean and then when it rains it kind of monsoons and it will just pour over and yeah I get some fish on the floor once a while but in general that's his water change system and they just thrive and yes it is in Miami so he can play with tropical fish year-round he's got a leg up but as we'll see there's lots of species we can be playing with and doing things with that are just as fun so so this is my set up last year you know I kind of set the store up and then I was I moved ponds and I bought a bunch of ponds here these are the new ones and so here we've got a 360 gallon pond and these are all hundred gallon ponds and then this was the first pond ever I bought 110 gallons and then here I snuck these ones in a key didn't even yell at me I thought for sure those would look too bad and she was going to go what's this but what those ended up being these down here were kind of Daphnia back up cultures this was my big gear to kind of master Daphne and stuff and so this grass here actually stole this tip from Dave Sanford we throw a handful of grass and as that breaks down the Daphnia want to eat that and it works pretty well because before that I was way over feeding these Daphne and I was making a go toxic stuff like that a lot of these ponds were some live bears in here some very Atta sly bears platies and then this one here was a mono shrimp and I found out they don't overwinter which normally they are about the hardiest shrimp out there those things are bulletproof but as you'll see later actually are some shrimp to overwinter here Amano's don't I thought for sure it was shoo-in but it doesn't and then in this big pond here I was making some apistogramma cockatoo IDs in the big pond there and so yeah that's kind of my setup it's not the most glamorous thing you know it's not a you know this good-looking thing but it's very functional and knowing that I you know was going to move I bought a house and so all is just moved in last week I've actually the only pawn that still stands there today is this one and I got to move that one probably tomorrow so but everything else getting set back up so this is a pond at Andy's house this is so he had as we selected a shop this actually has house since a 300 gallon pond and it's probably about that big and all these ferns grow in his backyard here and he uses this to raise Daphnia for all those claims inside and you know he hasn't really been harvesting yet this year because his bees are in in the zone of doing their bee thing right now but he basically chops a path here and goes and collects and you know what's a pond without a bunch of dafter a bunch of a duck weed there you know it's much duck weed he'll give you so this is a setup I had a few years ago and these are if you've seen my videos that be posted on YouTube I use these and so this is a seventy five gallon aquarium standard this here is aquarium plants Galasso stigma right there we've got some water lettuce and some water sprite and a little sponge filter and then over here we have what I call laundry tote holds about 20 gallons of water and we bred fish in there also that year and you know this one when if you ever do this in your front yard you're neighbors for sure think you're insane that's everyone was you know it's one thing to set up a pond it's another thing to put an aquarium outside because you do look insane and it doesn't look right but the whole reason I did is because I wanted to take video and show people what was going on or knees because when it's a normal point you can we look down and which it worked out worked out okay but your neighbors do think you're crazy until you start getting the plants to flower something like that you get an iris or something else and they get a little jealous but at first they just think you're the biggest heel ability they've ever seen so if you're going to do aquariums either hide it in the backyard or make sure that you make it look good by the end of the season so you don't look completely crazy the next year when you go to set it up again so yeah so interesting thing about this this pond and I'm calling upon squaring whatever you want to call it it's a miniature pond I say is it was fine with predators I didn't run to any normal predators be raccoon scat stuff like that well I got a cat eating a guppy a couple of times out of there but he could eat his fill and it still made a billion Guppies more than anyone ever needs but the real predator was the neighbor kids the neighborhood kids got fascinated because water and living things brings everyone to it and when I wasn't there they wanted to feed it and so one morning I come out I'm shooting a video and I stumble upon half a turkey sandwich and you know at first I'm just going what is this because the next morning a turkey sandwich doesn't look like a tricky sandwich it's gone what is this you know I thought it was a bone or something I you know I get a net and it's just this horrible mess and I'll just go ahead and tell you turkey sandwich doesn't come out with a net it pretty much goes through the net you've got a little bit of meat but all that red is staying in there and but the amazing thing is the mini pawns are so resilient and handles it just fine you know all the fish lives they just eat it and it didn't spike ammonia or anything and the plants just grew even faster so you know you never know what your your Predators are gonna be you think you know you make a cat proof or raccoon proof but it's hard to stop a kid from just going here eat you know especially when you're talking with them and you you've you know you've let them feed the fish they didn't know they were doing anything wrong so this is another little mini pond if you will this is a birdbath and you know we've got all these flowers blooming here obviously it's Andy's for all his bees and stuff but everything comes and uses this water - you're going to watch all your hummingbirds come in you're going to watch lots of bugs come in you're going to watch everything drink from it and so because it's a water source it is the epicenter of life and so wherever you put that in your yard you're going to watch everything go to it and you know so it just goes to show that even if you don't have a big space you could put something really small and still enjoy nature you don't have to be breeding fish some people are just making Daphnia or something like that or they just want somewhere watch stuff drink that's fun - this is Dave Sanford's pond and I hope one day I can be as good as Dave Sanford at growing plants because he's got this the most amazing garden he's always showing me crazy pictures of different stuff he's brought back from California and stuff like that and I'm going to go on record here and say this is the best pond you're ever going to see that all it does is grow daft so that's all he does because he's got crazy amounts of raccoons and he doesn't want to put a bunch of stuff overtop because all his plants and he's growing lots of irises here you can see how tall these are you know these are probably 4 feet up in the air and you know towards the end of the season you're going to get that type of thing and that's when the neighbors go maybe he's not crazies we makin some stuff look good and but I don't think dave has that problem at all because you know anyone that sees his stuff goes well you're just good at this you're making me look bad so let's get into actually setting up one of these ponds and you know it can be whatever container you want to be a five-gallon bucket it could be an aquarium you know what I don't want to hear is oh I don't have a container because about any auction there's going to be a tank that someone's just looking for a home it's a dollar so that's not a good excuse you can come with my neighbors think I'm crazy something like that I'll believe that but not having a kit container the main things you need is an air pump which if you buy a box of crap at any of these auctions you're going to have about 10 of them so lifetime supply with one box of crap you might even get a sponge filter but you might have to buy one if you don't own one you know and then some things to help jumpstart the pond initially might be some flourish or some kind of nutrients if you're using tank water that'll start it to you but when we throw a bunch of plants in there we need something to keep it going because it's usually not fish ready so yeah and some dechlorinator unless you're on a well or you're going to have a staging barrel or something like that but most times you're going to fill it once and water change is going to happen from rain let's run it drought like we are now so you might actually have to change some water that being said because we're only running at 3 or 4 months you may only change water once or so manually depends on how many fish you end up putting in there and the load you do so this is another type of filtration I run these on little miniature koi ponds in the store and this is just a DIY wet/dry filter and so we've got a little bulkhead up here you know cost you three bucks or something like that and this is a Lowe's bucket and if you go to the actual painting aisle you can get one that's not branded Lowe's and it just sits great it's great and there's still three dollars and so we use a little power head down inside and we pump the water up and the next thing it's going to hit a drip plate and this is a a bowl you buy from the dollar store and this one here I drilled with a little drill bit and that takes forever in a day and whenever your if you've ever doing anything for yourself and you drilled plastic you always get almost done and then it literally snaps it you'll be on the last five holes and boom and luckily it was high enough that it didn't matter but if you're ever going to be making stuff like this invest in a soldering iron because melting through it super easy doesn't shatter so it's the best nine dollars you've ever spent because you're not going to spend 45 minutes drilling holes to bust it apart on the last hole and I've done that and that's why it's important to tell you is it's it's a sad time when you're making like 6 of these and you're watching them blow out so so yeah I mean we bring the water in and what this drip plate does it disperses it over the media which is going to be a lot of bio balls I have in here and this is a piece of sponge filter that I basically tore off and I put it in there just to seed some bacteria and then back to the little pond it goes and so a filter like this would be great if we're going to do goldfish koi for breeding African cichlids anything that we can run a little pump with a sponge on the intake and not be sucking in tiny fry if we're going to be breeding you know killifish we're going to breed tetras or danios white clouds they're all going to get sucked right in that's you know with a white cloud race that we do most years the people that don't have great success they over engineer they've got this elaborate system that could house you know ten million dollars and fish and all I need to do is house a white cloud but the filter is so strong it's sucking white clouds through there and spitting through at a million miles an hour and the reality is we had nothing we would have made some white clouds if we had a sponge filter we'd make 200 and with this thing you have the potential making a billion or zero there's no in-between it's it's either it was perfect and it was big enough they didn't get sucked in or it made zero so so this is another little innovation this is the hundred gallon troughs that I bought four of last year they roll on a row there and what this is a sponge and intake sponge like you put on a cancer filter and just some PVC and that's what it looks like out out of the pond there it's got an uplift tube and here is a sponge and this is a tea and then this connects right to the bulkhead that's installed in these already when you buy them and I've got a valve on the other side and you just drop the air stone in and it's going to pull the water through and it's real efficient when you want to change water because you just open the valve and you've already got a sponge on the intake so you're not sucking fish through and there it is an operation just drop it in it's real easy so you know filtration usually should be you know like ten dollars or less it's you just need a container and something to move some water you'll be good so let's talk about the fun part the fish you know there's lots of these things I've tried personally I've heard about lots of people doing things the very add is platy one of my favorites I've taken it personally down to about 35 degrees under that doesn't do so well they're already sluggish at 35 but at about 33 or so they start getting sick and so I recommend pulling them back out of 35 and you're going to go say well 35 is already really low I push the the bounds and I like to take stuff as low as it can go so I can put out next year and when you put out the following year usually fry from that can go even colder because the ones that have made it that far are accustomed to getting that cold and you can get things to last much longer and that's where you know many years ago Guppies were non-heated fish we just put them in aquarium and we didn't put a heater to it and they lived and they thrive now we kind of baby them so much that you know we sneeze in the same room and we're losing some of these fancy Guppies we're importing and but with hard work we can take them back the other way and make them very Hardy and that's what I'm trying to do with the very Addis platy it's one of my favorite fish ever then there's things that are just made to be outside longer in our weather and that's going to be like these rice fish they can just naturally they want to be a cooler fish and you know they're not quite a live bear they're going to have eggs that they deposit on plants and stuff like that the water lettuce and water hyacinth are all going these long roots are going to swim by deposit eggs and you're going to get fry you're going to be super happy then you've got things like rainbows and rainbows you know they're going to be tough to breed outside unless you're using a lot of pond or a lot of spawning mops or a very big pond but what you're going to get is the best colored rainbows you've ever sinks are going to eat bugs all day long and so if you're going to be outside barbecuing stuff anyway one you see natural sunlight on that fish it's going to look amazing and then when you bring it in for winter people are going to go how do you make them look this good and it's why you got a vacation um outside that's what makes them look spectacular so if you want to get good video or good pictures do that marks a dead will raise bettas he raises them outside and you know that's another thing if you're running out of space in your fish room start setting the ponds outside and you've got another four months to grow some stuff up and then and then that's the problem is you've got to find somewhere for them to go because you've made all these fish you've raised them all up see better you know make make an exit strategy to you make friends the fish door or you know aqua bit on whatever you going to do or you know like I did take a bunch of white clouds and put them in a tank and it's go wow that looks cool you know that's 200 white clouds see Achille fish they like lower temperatures swordtails I did some pistols outside and we've heard from other speakers how they in California can do like Borel I year round out there and we're not you know we're warming up and we've got a drought going on we're getting closer to California and it you know if weather trend continues we may be able to pull off year-round per Li or something like that and the important thing to keep in mind when you're researching temperatures on fish is typically they're going to be collected when it's warm no one wants to go in the middle of winter where they're from and go all the water is a coldest great let me get in there and catch these fish they go when the weather is nice and so when you're reading temperatures you might go okay well this rainbow says from 70 to 78 and that's you know kind of arbitrary what we've decided and then you might go well is collected at 68 and you know between 68 and 75 and the reality is Miss Gary Lang has said and stuff sometimes some of the pseudo moguls and stuff will be down in the 50s when you know what the adverse season not you know in the winter and select that's already down to 50s and we think of them as gentle creatures like oh god my heater dropped two degrees I hope they're okay reality is they're very adaptable as long as you know we're not doing something crazy extreme where it's dropping from 90 to you know 40 overnight but all the changes are going to be gradual and we can obviously do koi you know in a mini pond you better have you know somewhere to unload these things or move up from there but koi obviously can overwinter and learners are real Hardy 1 and right here is a little cherry shrimp and that is the one that I do over winter I've done it a few years in a row now and that's cherry shrimp outside and you would think that that couldn't be done and yet you breed a bunch outside and you know how you find out they can do it as next year you go oh wait there's cherry shrimp in here I didn't catch them all and now they're big and they look great and you would have swore you caught them all and a couple years in a row and white clouds in the same pond so even though they should be eating each other and stuff like that you know cherry shrimp should be eating the eggs of them and they should be eating the babies they cohabitate because we've given tiny fish a hundred gallons of water and a bunch of plants and even when it's really cold all they do is they just get dormant they just go well I'm just going to sit here and almost do nothing because it's really cold and they don't eat and stuff like that you know some yellow shrimp I'm probably gonna try some more variants like that this year for myself you can obviously do some fancy goldfish they don't like to get super cold so they're going to experience the same season and the season it's going to be anywhere from May to October depending on the year like right now we probably could start in May and depending on how it ends we might end in October there's been years where I didn't get to start telly and it ended in August yet oh so it it's kind of rebuild it all it's sweet and a month later you're taking it back down going oh that wasn't nearly as cool but you know you never know what the weather's going to give you and you hope it's a good one and some other things here the dwarf fly bear header Andrea Formosa I've done cribs or at any oddest and stuff outside some pseudo Moga rainbows and then don't forget about you know Japanese trapdoor snails those can overwinter here there's weather loaches there's mostly if you're into it it can be done outside for at least at three to four months and then if you want to go longer you can use some heaters and get you know a little bit more on each side or you can just bring them in and so on 100 gallon pond usually I can get an extra month on each side so almost extended to six months with a 300 watt heater and by my math which you know who knows if it's right but seems to be accurate for me in Everett when I was living there it was 20 bucks a month to run if that heater ran 24 hours a day which when it's cold it will so you might go well you know I don't have time to put these fish away right now an extra month for 20 bucks is kind of worth it though so yeah instead of losing them all if you run into something so this is one of those sword tales that Carl makes that you know wins awards and stuff like that and yeah you can just see you know obviously it's a high fin and he he just he wins that's what he does he all he does he lives to make his sword tales better and it's a big accomplishment for him when he makes his own sword tale better and he is competing you know some with some of the Japanese and stuff like that and you're usually trying for a little more color but he's got you know some great genes going and now they've gotten to the point where they're calling it kind of dual branching where even this will start getting longer where it wise out and it starts getting you can get so long the fish can't swim anymore and that's not really desirable but a lot of times what you'll see in a pet store like if I was to order these you'd get about half the dorsal so right about there it would be long but you wouldn't have all this you know and that's just a good-looking fish and that's that's all raised on you know basically algae and bugs you know and free water changes so when you start doing stuff like that many ponds start getting fun so this is some of the fish farms we were at in Florida on this trip we got to see a bunch of fish farms and the reason we have these slides here is that you know so these people are doing this for a living and they're mixing black angels and they've got you know ranch you goldfish and they've got some like albino or silver angels there and they're all in the same pond basically it doesn't fit in each other's mouth it doesn't bother each other and that's kind of the same thing you can be doing with your pond and that's how we get away with well we've got you know we've got salamanders and frogs and shrimp and fish and stuff like that they all pretty much cohabitate and we'll breed you know so here another example we've got like Pangasius catfish which they're going to get huge but they're not yet and like some Tiger Barb's and tons of algae you can see algae everywhere you can see some snails on aside and yeah so I had to throw you know some African cichlids in here for someone there's also some tilapia in here but you know African cichlids are definitely done the same way and a lot of times it's it's almost easier to breed an african cichlid outside you give them the room and you give them all these plants that they can't really destroy because they can rip some roots off they want at least water hyacinth or something but they're going to go spit all their fry after our mouth burger right in there and they're typically going to make it and if you only put out a couple of pairs or something like that there's gonna be all this room and you're going to scoop up all these babies and so if you you know are doing African cichlids on a budget that's a good way to fill out when your peacock colonies or something like that and there's some things I want to try but I haven't yet like super chromis and stuff like that I just think they would enjoy eating bugs but you know I haven't haven't tried it yet so so this is the same trip we were at Florida aquatic nursery a lot of plants were coming from there and this just to show you that aquarium plants also work great in your pond so you don't have to go and buy water hyacinth or irises or stuff like that even though they're going to bloom and look amazing but you can just take all your trimmings you know so go trim your tank and throw it all into a pond and all of its going to grow awesome because it gets amazing sunlight and so like when I borrowed the club's parameter which I do all the time cuz I love that thing I test lights and then you know I I always have to double checks every time I have it I go and I go was that really the right reading as I go out to the sidewalk in front of my store and you put it on the sidewalk and the PAR is over a thousand even on a cloudy day it's so much higher and so when you are placing your pond know that even in the shade of trees it's going to get way more light than your aquarium has ever provided it and so you know that's when you're placing your pond you know you kind of you place it one where you're going to interact with it and it my new house that's basically in full Sun all the time so I'm going to use a little bit larger ponds to help counteract that but more lights not better when you're dealing with you know a thousand par that's you know of high light fixtures that might be ten to eight of them and that's it's going to be crazy you're going to grow tons of algae which that is a good thing for fish they're going to love it but if you want to make more plants if that was your goal to you wouldn't want to give it that much light so here is this is a water hyacinth bloom super easy to bloom and it's also super easy 1/2 points so you know I definitely bloomed irises and water hyacinths and stuff like that and they get you a lot of points it's one way to interact the Hat programs you haven't yet and this is Bobby and Tim's kiddie pool actually and I want to say was you know 700 gallons or so it's got green water azolla here you know you can reproduce that the Hat point they also had frogs and they had they responding fancy goldfish in here so all of those and then you know they had some driftwood in here and stuff like that so it can be as cheap is you know a thirty dollar kiddie pool it's you know nice and big or it can be something else anything that holds water life will find it especially if we're going to put the life in there but other life will find it too so even the stuff you put in expect visitors so this is rachel lierz ponds and she's been doing this for a few years and you might have seen her articles she's written on this and this is just how she does it she uses some looks like 70 gallon Reber made totes and you can get those at any feed store where you'd get you know stuff for horses and stuff like that senex coop that type of thing and something like the 70 gallon here costs you about $75 and the hundred gallons I use cost me $80 so for me it's a no-brainer five dollars more I get a bigger pond and 150 gallon you think okay well me that's only a little more it's twice the price like 150 bucks so that's where I stopped at the hundred gallon because not that much better but yeah she runs two of them and there's one over there and she's built in this is on the side of her house here and she's built in the you know in encase them in wood and everything so they look good the neighbors probably don't think she's insane like my neighbors do but yeah so she's got lilies and water hyacinth and you know probably some iris here and stuff growing and yeah so here's a Lotus from fan fan they love their lotuses and Brandon the younger son that's taking over fan he's all about lotuses and cultivating new ones so like that and before I went there I didn't know that there was such a variety of colors you can basically any color you've ever and then there's also ones who only bloom at night you know so like at midnight you've got this awesome bloom and during the day you see nothing and so there's all these weird things see if you're a night owl you know like Daniel over here you can have cool stuff outside so this is what my pond looked like the the year that I did the white cloud racemate like 200 of them and this is obviously in the winter and this is the winterizing I do I do nothing I let it you know the sponge filter still there air is still bubbling it started floating I don't know why but you know and it's snowing you're like yeah well hey and I'm not gonna fix it it's ice-cold there's you know inches of slush there you can see you know as if I was a good mini pond keeper which I'm not I'm lazy I would have cut back my iris it made a cool bloom and everything and you know being overworked I didn't cut it back so this is dying back but it'll come back every year it's they're forgiving and you know believe it or not there's white clouds under this that are thriving we're not feeding them one important thing it is kind of nice to have this sponge filter floating because it will let the water stratify and what that means is the bottom water is going to be warm and the top water is going to be the coldest and that's where it's going to freeze and if we're mixing that water by letting a sponge filter or a pump do that everything's it's going to get cold and so if we let it stratify you know especially if we've buried the pond which is when it's not this is above ground but if we're below the frost line you might get that bottom water staying at 60 degrees 55 degrees and the top of your pond it's got four inches of ice and that's how most koi and stuff like that around the country are surviving is that core earth temp but even without burying it it's still going to stay warmer down below that being said if we're using you know a little 10 gallon aquarium just I'm just going to tell you those will crack they freeze salt and they crack so you know you might want to use a little more water if you're going to if you know you're over wintering it now a lot of times like the ten gallons of stuff once it's kind of towards the end of the season I just put them in the garage I don't do anything with them I just move in the garage and let life happen and then when it's I think it's warm enough you shove them back out there that way they're not cracking but yeah so you know you see you get your three to three to six months on your season and then you yeah by the time it's you know cold you want to be playing with your aquariums anyway so this is just the off season game it's you know is something to do for you to do while everyone else is sitting at the barbecue you can have one eye over on your pond going look what's doing so this is more fish farms here total sunlight on all these lots of algae buildup using concrete and then there's lots of covered areas too and like this fish farm everything is using shade cloth and that's just I just put these in to show you that the Sun is so powerful it will burn plants back it will overheat stuff and so the more shade you have even if it's the house casting it or a fence or a tree the better off you are you know and people go well and she is not going to get warm left you'll still get plenty warm but if it's not in the shade it'll get too warm on you know you'll hit August and you go wow things are just melting pretty much so now let's talk about predators the things that we're inviting all the stuff to our mini pond this is a dragonfly larva here and what it loves to do is it loves to go and grab a fish and just devour that's what it does and I ran these my first year with white clouds I brought him in and they actually came in with the shrimp so they were down low in the water when I was catching them out and you know it's to me it was an alien the eye it's enjoying nature daily the first thing is what is this thing this thing is crazy and you know it's a classic you know grill screen where like the thing grabbed my finger I'm like what is that it's not a cherry shrimp and you know it looks like an alien because and then you know I found one latched onto a fish and oh god what is this what have I done and turns out dragonfly larvae and you know dragonflies are cool larva kind of scary fish farmers know all about it I wasn't a fish farmer and I'm still not a fish farmer but I didn't know about it they're scary the other things are going to run into raccoons you're inviting everyone with you've got stuff to eat which is fish and you've got water cats you know those are the main ones you can you can get a dog drinking from it a lot of people will set up troughs and stuff for the horse and they keep fish out there and every once while one gets eaten but usually it's they're eating all the stuff falling off the horses so it's the other way around but you don't even know what your putter is like you know I thought I had everything squared away and then my neighbor kids are feeding for me and you just don't know until you've invited it you know if you live way rural you might have deer and stuff like that you know but the good thing is about the pond is it does attract everyone and you know that I consider that a bonus because all the things you're bringing in you know if I had African cichlids you know this is just food and that's a great thing you get a big enough fish in there it's devouring it while I'm playing a small fish all of a sudden he's a predator you know so it does depend on what you're doing so here's these are little wire racks like you could put in a closet or something like that and you can cut them to fit really easy to fit over this hundred gallon tote and you know so you can get a set up with a grid top you make your little sponge filter there you might be into it for a hundred dollars and now you've got something's going to last the next 20 years and to drive your neighbors insane you know and here's like a little 50 50 gallon pond here with lots of plants in it but it can be as live as you want I used to run I had Andy build me these rad tops that were greenhouse siding and select that I can lift him up and then I you know I had to crack around them and I wanted to trap in the heat when it was getting cold and so I thought okay I'm going to put insulation around it like the piping insulation the black stuff and turns out that's just the biggest cat magnet you've ever seen because they looked like a scratching post so I literally just had tons of cats ripping at it and so you never know you think ok I've outsmarted nature here I've got you know I'm going to keep all this heat in it's like oh not if the cats just shred this thing and they they thought it was great you know but I'm going ok well back to the drawing board on that one so that's half the fun though is you engineer this thing you go okay here we go I got it and then you know nature goes oh you thought you had it it's not even close so so the last thing here this my niece Rosalyn checking out plants and fish and the ponds they are kid magnets and that's the most important thing is to bring the family together around this pond even Katie will come in and go did you know you have this in your pond did you see you had fry did you see this is blooming you know and getting kids involved and you want the neighbor kids to come and feed you want them to do this so that that way they're learning about it instead of you know just playing video games stuff like that so the pond is going to support you with fun it's going to get your family involved because you know yeah you've got a crazy aquarium obsession we know that but for some reason when they see do we have a frog did you know we had this you know they're into it for some reason and then you know kids that's that's the future of it so to teach them makes it all worthwhile so please ask me questions because lots of stuff that hasn't been covered and you probably go what about this fish what about that ask now and I will do my best to answer them how do you manage a mosquito mosquito larvae so a mosquito larvae the great thing is you put a fish in there they manage it for you and there's there's something to be said for setting out a five gallon bucket even without fish in it and you just go net it and feed it to your aquariums fish love it but in general even something as small is you know white clouds and Guppies select that you'll never see mosquito larva and bigger fish obvious you're going to devour it and yeah I've never you know in in a Daphne upon that can be a problem where if you all you have is Daphne or getting some skill larb in there but typically you're raising the Daphne to feed to fish and it transfers over the way time it's a problem is when you're feeding baby fish so you've raising you know let's say you're raising some rainbows from Gary Lang or something and they're only this big and you need them to eat that Daphnia but that mosquito larva is the size of that rainbow that's not going to work but in general add some fish that's kind of why in California if you have a body of water they force mosquito fish on you to keep the mosquitoes down and yeah so I haven't run to it'd be a problem for me if anything there's devouring more and yeah so so much so that I encourage bugs I think of ways there's a thing called a bug whacker and you put it on your dock or something like that and what it is it's a light with weed whacker attached to it and bugs come to it and it hits them down into the water and that's just you know I figure a buffet for my fish and I haven't bought one yet but it all stemmed from you know the ingenuity of how can I beat nature and that was a you know a bug zapper I thought I was on to it turns out a P is a bug it's got like no nutritional value left so it's it's worthless but that's why a bug whacker exists and I don't own one yet but you know I hope to play with one of those cuz I think you'll be fun so do you have experience using the like galvanized you know zinc copper tubs I I personally haven't used any I've seen lots of people do it a lot of people would say it works fine for fish I think you might run into some problems with shrimp and maybe snails there's a lot of koi people or fancy goldfish people that will do basically a rhino liners like the if you were to have your truck bed that like rough plastic put down they'll just have that sprayed in that and then they'll put that in their yard and it's really easy to build around those because one their perfect circle typically and then they just build like the retaining wall stones around it looks amazing but yeah so I haven't dealt personally with it but I think fish would be okay but inverts because I I remind like my first G SAS auction ever I had the great idea well I'm afraid these shrimp are gonna get smushed in a bag right and so my grandma had canning jars great idea well it turns out the canning jar lids had like some zinc and it killed all my shrimp and I felt horrible cuz it's my first auction ever and then here these shrimp like oh yeah and you know feel big thing a dead shrimp who wants it I got oh my god what have I done you know so yeah that's first time I told that story it's probably good to get it out of my system here but yes I think they're more expensive than getting the big first it could be I haven't priced out the zinc one they're not the zinc but the galvanized ones just because the Rubbermaid ones I don't know if they're fiberglass they're definitely plastic but they are bulletproof and that's what people use for cattle because they can trample em and they don't give way and the metal ones will but that being said hopefully are not attracting too many cattle I mean I wouldn't doubt it but you know do you have any issues with child safety or animal safety I haven't run into that because all of my ponds are above ground but definitely if you're putting stuff in the ground same rules apply as swimming pools and stuff like that you know if you have a small dog like we adopt a little small dog and Katie's already saying well don't put him in the ground you know we don't want a little sassy to get in there but yeah so like my grandma has a pond that I built her and she keeps some koi and some goldfish and she had a raccoon problem we built a kind of a PVC stand and then put what's called like construction hardware cloth made out of plastic and so it totally encompasses it and the squares are big enough that doesn't really impede the look we spray painted all the PVC and so it kind of blends in and the fact the reason why we want to raise it up about a foot is that's about as long as a raccoon arm you know so if the koi are being friendly and they're up there you don't want to get grabbed and it also helps with you know herons and stuff like that she doesn't have but that also keeps kids out but they can still totally get right up to it and feed and interact with it but yeah I would say definitely if there's young uns select that if you're putting it down in the ground it could be a problem but that being said most of the ponds that we saw at least at my house were about three feet tall so they're already about this tall and so you know usually when a kid is big enough unless we're building a ramp for them to crawl into there they'd have to be pretty big and they could you know get right back out but yeah I would treat it you know as a hazard with small ones you're not putting yours and where you hit yours in direct sunlight all right but you would recommend putting them underneath the trees yeah if you if you have the ability to shade them I definitely recommend that that being said I've always had to run mine in basically 24-hour Sun and even at the new place I've got them up against a fence and still get a little bit of shade but you know knowing what I know now if the power meter and just running some ponds on the side of my house and stuff most things get about the same nighttime temperature but the ones in the direct heat or the direct sunlight get way hotter and so you know the logic things like well I want to make sure they get warm enough they pretty much do from air temp you know just around you know the area but they will get much hotter and then they cool down so you get drastic swings which the fish handle just fine but you know it's not fun when you walk out and like even though it's bubbling you know all your Guppies are gasping at the top or something going oh my god it's you know and you use a heat gun or something like oh yeah it's 94 degrees in there you know it's really hot and then another question how do you handle electricity outside so a couple of things if you're close to your garage I run it outside and a lot of times I'll actually put like the air pump itself in the garage or something like that inside or through window and then run the airline tubing out because that's the only power I need is to make some kind of bubbles happen but they do make things you could run an extension cord and they make these things that basically go over the extension cord and thing you plugged in the make them watertight you can make your own type apparatus and if you're going to put the like an air pump beside your pond you want to put something over it a little tote or something like that because the Sun is going to beat down and make it really hot and then two or three years down the road plastic super brittle from all the UV but by then you just pull another one out of the box of crap and replace it aside yeah how would you deal with cedar needles falling with that turn the water acidic it can yeah it depends on so in my experience I've had lots of pine needles and anything that has happened naturally my environment falls in and there's lots of debris come out coming out of winter where you're like wow that is crazy bad you test water and send tends to be okay but in general because it's only like a three to four month window we're doing and that's kind of why we don't do a lot of water changes it doesn't affect the water parameters that much if you were worried like sometimes when I'm doing something that I know like let's say it's a guppy from Thailand or something I know it's going to be extra sensitive I'll put like a piece of Texas holy rock or something in there so if it did start dropping on me real quick it would help counteract that but I haven't run into that and I've I've had lots of decaying matter and you know common knowledge to tell you like that's going to be horrible but in the fish rule it's awesome like they just it's more food and stuff to eat so yeah I would keep an eye on it but I've never run into a problem and that's with lots of pine cones and you know branches falling in I'm pretty much I kind of decide for what it go let's see what happens you know so is it amazing um what I want to think of it purifies water yeah so all plants you know they're gonna pull stuff out of water and water hyacinth has been tested to you know be really efficient at it and that's why we use it at stewards treatment facilities and stuff like that yeah it'll take heavy metals it basically sucks up everything and yeah your water might be tannin but it's going to soak up a lot of stuff and so the live plants not only are they shelter but they will clean water and stuff like that and you know even if you didn't have any live plants which I do recommend you do algae will just form and it's going to serve that purpose for you it's just going to you're going to want a string algae in a while so it's ugly but it will serve the same purpose and given the choice I'd rather Bluma an iris or something than have wow you made a lot of algae this year a good job so we're trying to appease the people that know what mo about don't know about aquariums on that note let's give Cory a big round of applause you

Channel: Aquarium Co-Op

Views: 119,606

Keywords: greater seattle aquarium society, mini ponds, breeding tropical fish outside, outdoor tropical fish pond, tropical pond, Tropical fish pond, outdoor aquarium pond, aquarium society, mini garden pond, outdoor aquarium, aquarium ponds, greatter seattle aquarium s, aquariumcoop, aquarium outdoor mini, Fancy guppy pond, Guppy Pond, breeding fish outside, tropical fish outside, breeding tropical fish outdoors, ponds, outdoor tropical fish, mini tropical pond, summer tubbin

Id: SEnv3QWLIMw

Length: 54min 47sec (3287 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 01 2015