Outdoor Pond transforms to Indoor Pond

So, GSAS ran a contest this year called "The Great Fish Race".  The idea was to put up to 12 adult fish, of any type, in an outdoor pond and see how many fry you have from the time the race begins until the time the race ends (May - October I think...or maybe Jun-Oct).

Anyway, we did a 35G tub pond.  This was our first outdoor pond.  We stocked it with 10 minnows (a variety of White clouds, gold cloud, and silver cloud minnows).  We loaded the pond up with plants and sat back to enjoy.  We had two events which basically drained the pond down to maybe a couple of gallons of water, we just refilled it and hoped for the best.  The cat never bothered it, the kids never bothered it and really enjoyed it.  

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In the end, we didn't have any fry in the pond (so sad) but we were just happy to make it through the summer and still have fish alive.  About a month ago, we brought the plants in and put them into a 55G tank with a sponge filter.  This 55G tank was originally vacated when we moved its inhabitants to the new 155G tank.  Little did we know that there were some babies left behind in the 55G tank (Psammichromis).  There is no heater in the tank and we didn't even feed it for quite some time until we saw the babies.  These survivor fry seem to be doing pretty well even though we have no heat in the tank and very little food for them.

Yesterday we moved the minnows to the indoor tank from the outdoor tank.  There were 9 of them left that we found.  I was amazed at their color and health.  So here's a video of their overwintering tank.  It's a mess I know...I do plan on doing some cleaning of it, trimming the plant roots, and cleaning the outside of the tank but for now the fish and the plants seem to be pretty happy.  We left the waterlily in the outside pond...all the other plants we brought inside.

55G, 2 sponge filters, no heater, ambient temp range right now is 65-70 degrees, tons of pond plants and any hitchhiker critters, minnows, psammi fry.  



(thats the psammi on the bottom, under the minnow)

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I expect the temps to hit in the high 40-50 range during the heart of winter in our garage.  I don't know if we will heat the tank or not.  Options would be throwing a stock pond heater in but I don't know if it would be ok in the glass tank or not and not sure what it would do to the tank temps.  It's an option though.

Wish us luck..we will see what spring brings

Cool story Donna,
I dont know enough about the fish to give advice but I just liked reading the story. I did follow the pond spawn race. Kind of weird that you didn't get any to spawn. But I did like your mini pond a lot. Love it when ppl get water plants to flower . There is an outdoor pond project in my near future. Perhaps next spring

I am torn on whether you should heat the tank at all... I guess the psammis will need it. The white clouds would probably love the 50 degree temps (maybe not so much the 40's as that's near freezing). Have you thought of just insulating the tank? and maybe putting something warm next to it? Remembering how I saw your setup before, if there is another heated tank next to this one it may actually help keep nearby temps up. Just some thoughts!

Chad...its possible there were spawns but we had a pump in the pond and it might have sucked the babies out...its a possiblity...but we just didn't have any.

Tom...there will be no other heated tanks in the garage once everything is moved. The pond tank will be the lone tank holding down the fort so to speak. Everything else will be in the house. So I don't want to heat the garage for one tank and putting a regular tank heater in might not work...thinking the stock heater might be the solution but worried about it in a glass tank.

Bummer on all the tanks leaving the garage. So glad I was able to take pics when I did!

As for this one tank, I agree with the pond heater, but I would add insulation just in case. Specially if the garage will open/close over the winter loosing its heat in one fell swoop. Insulation will delay the effect of that change. And even if the door won't open/close, insulation will help reduce the need for the heater to run. I used a [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] roll of insulation from home depot! Other than that, I hope other members have more thoughts

Those outdoor ponds look great, Donna!
Can't wait to see the tank pictures!

PokeSephiroth wrote:Those outdoor ponds look great, Donna!
Can't wait to see the tank pictures!

Thanks...the indoor pond is in the video...that''s as good as it gets  

Ugh, weird. when I was viewing this thread on my phone, I could only see the pictures... hahaha now Isee the video! that's really neat!

I would love to try a pond like that next year! I wonder if the fish will reproduce in the tank over the winter? Does it require a lot of maintenance?

I keep a 29 gallon in an unheated insulated garage.  I have styrofoam sheets on all sides except the front and a regular aquarium heater in it.  It worked well except for the one week we had to leave last winter and the heater stopped working, freezing all of my bristlenose to death. I know it has to work a lot harder outside to keep a safe temperature and I'm thinking I might use two heaters this winter.  This will give a backup in case one breaks and maybe lighten the load of each if there are two?

I was kinda hoping that by spring we might have a few extra minnows to throw into the pond so I was thinking along the same lines Betty

As for maintenance...I haven't done much up to this point. On my list for this tank are trimming up the plant roots, adding some plant ferts, I have aphids on one of the plants so right now I'm just rubbing them off to make them a meal for the fish but want to do some research about what I could do there that would not hurt the fish, water changes, maybe cleaning out the duckweed as it seems to really be taking off now the pond has come inside...there was hardly any in the outdoor pond.

lady bugs love aphids sometimes garden centers sell them or I think you can order them online.