Pond and Aquarium Fish, Canadian Style

Hey all you fish keepers and fanciers! Lilypon and I have been having a great time hijacking her thread "Their time has come to an end......." by discussing our fishy experiences (here's the link for those who want to take a look http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/545807/).

Now, we all know that we Canadians (contrary to some popular belief) do indeed have our own style and way of doing things, and this thread is meant to be entertaining as well as informative and just a good chat. So let's start it off by talking about the most unusual "pond fish" we have ever had. Mine were a pair of South American Red Devil cichlids - you can read the story in Lilypon's thread :-)

Feel free to add anything fish or pond related to the thread, however remotely related it might be. If it gets too big (here's hopin'!) I'll simply do what gardenwife does with her "Nightowls" thread in the Jokes and Chat forum - I'll split it off into a new thread with a link back to the previous one.

And, oh yeah! Welcome to any of our international friends who want to share their stories and experiences too, eh!

Morning Ginny :)

Here some info on the White's Tree Frog:

Here's a pic of the funny looking little guys: http://www.bright.net/~a1rep/a1whitecare.html

re: moving local tadpoles (mentioned in the previous thread). I thought I'd give that a try because adult frogs will head back to pond/creek/lake you took them from. I'm not sure if the tadpoles would have that kind of memory or draw. Another option is finding their egg mass......
however tadpoles to me seemed a little easier find. Fish will eat them so I'd be putting them in pond with smaller fish with lots of hyacinth roots and aeration plants.

They aren't bad.......my mother made Chinese Food with them one year. She didn't tell us til after we ate them. The meal had been fine up to that point. ;S

This message was edited Sep 21, 2005 12:58 PM

Another way to keep the tadpoles safe might be to physically segregate them in a small corner of the pond. You could maybe use a plastic container of some kind (without a top) with holes poked all over it for circulation, a couple of plants or whatever they require for food, a rock or piece of wood they can use to climb out on once they grow legs, etc. That would keep the fish out but allow the little froggies to get out and into the pond when they're ready.

D'ya suppose we're the only fish lovers here? So far, no bites (oooooh, bad pun).

no no, not the only fish lovers. au contraire.

and in many guises. as a child I fished, as a student I fished with my dad and now I have fish; guarding them jealously from the nasty heron who appeared recently.

Well,not that recently, on a previous visit he ate the only frog I had -- a green frog who appeared from who knows where and was a most amiable companion (once I had established he wasn't a bullfrog AVERT AVERT) until he disappeared down the heron's gullet.

I would be really interested in hearing about how you get your frogs established. I have a large (23 x 15) oval pond about 4 ft deep. Some koi, some goldfish/too many goldfish, and have entered into negotiations to get another schooling fish. (name escapes me) Would love to have golden orfe, but evidently you can't bring them into the country.

onwards!!!! better go read your other thread!

Welcome hortensia.......we are at least at three now Ginny and I'm sure others will come out of the woodwork. I know a couple of other low zoners do have ponds as does Sunrize And GGD (BC) and some of our Ontario members. As more gardens are shut down I'm sure more will pop in.

Ginny the container you mentioned above reminds me of the plastic nursery that the baby fish would be segregated to in the main aquarium. I'm sure something along those lines would work in the shadier part of the pond.

I'm slowly building up the nerve to don my hunting waders and crawl into my ponds to start the lovely task of pulling my water lilies, removing the clay and bagging them up.

This message was edited Sep 21, 2005 7:11 PM

soon we will be moving our fish in there big tanks in the basement
We have 3 large tanks,
and I too have to remove my water lilies and store them for winter with all my other water plants, but this won't be done till at least the Thanksgiving week-end,, we try to keep the fish in the pond as long as we can,,
and I am sure we will find many babies this year as we always find many
and yes it is time to bring all the house plants in the house which is what I have been doing for the last few days and still more to do tomorrow,, so much work as we settle into fall season...

Wilma

Ok gang I will admit I have a 50 gallon inside tank. No outside fish yet ... so I have been following along with your talk it's just my fishes are so regular compared to all the fancy ones you talk about.
I liked the cooked frog quote!!
Ann

Hey Ann.....so which ones do you have in your tank?

Hi hortensia, Wilma, Ann. Thanks for dropping by!

According to sanannie hortensia, attracting froggies is a matter of "build it and they will come". I think I'm gonna need to liberate some tadpoles next year or something. How you establish them beyond that I don't know. Maybe we can all learn together next year :-)

Ann, there's no such thing as just regular fish. They are all fun, unique, and have their own quirky personalities. I've also raised guppies and mollies, and even some sunfish out of the local river and had a lot of fun with that too.

Do you just have one really large pond Wilma or more smaller ones? You must have a lot of fish to fill up 3 tanks!

Pam, I was thinking about a nursery container when I was talking about that, but I wasn't sure if you could get one big enough to accomodate all the little tadpoles as they grew into bigger little froggies. Was thinking you might have to make one with sheets of plexi-glass/plastic and silicone. Of course it depends on how many tadpoles you start with I guess.

Hi all. In Lilypon's thread that lead to the introduction of this one (link at top of this thread) I alluded to a couple of funny stories I had to share concerning tadpoles and turtles. While I have a couple of minutes I thought I'd share one of them now.

Tadpoles
When I was about 10 or 11 years old I once caught 4 tadpoles in a jar and brought them home to try to raise them. My Mom was really great about it - she even went out and bought me one of those little plastic turtle dishes with the "island and palm tree" in the centre so they'd have somewhere to get out of the water once they got legs. Watching their legs sprout and their tails get shorter and shorter as they started looking more and more like frogs was absolutely fascinating for me. Then.....disaster struck! We went away to visit my grandparents for a few days, my Mom leaving enough food in their dish to keep them until we got back. The first thing I did when we returned was rush over to the kitchen counter to check on my tadpoles and.....they were gone! There weren't any tadpoles anywhere! While we were away they had finished becoming frogs and decided they were ready to move on. We never found a one and never discovered how they got out of the house either. It's still a mystery to me to this day.

Well.....time to get back to work. I'll post the neighbour's turtle story when I'm on break later.
--Ginny

Good idea Ginny.....I remember my father making things like that with plexiglass.

LOLOL.....your story above sounds vaguely familiar except I had a salamander. I think you should talk to your mother again about those frogs. ;)

I have a froggie rescue story to share. A few years ago I was weeding in the garden and I heard this squealing that seemed to be coming from the pond area. So I went to investigate and found the squealing was actually a little frog that was probably shouting "help, help!" because a garter snake had gotten into the pond and had the frog by one of his hind legs! Me, in a panic is not a pretty sight.....I kinda jump up and down, shake my hands and go "oh, oh, oh...." LOL. But on this day, that poor frog's situation made me immediately jump into action. : ^ I swiftly grabbed a piece of driftwood (luckily it was by the pond) and tried to whack the snake so it would let go but I couldn't get enough leverage for a good blow; so I wound up and pitched the wood right at the snake to scare it....and he let the froggie go! I was proud of my unusually quick thinking and quick response, (tee hee).... but was most proud that I rescued the froggie (yay).

(edited to add some emotion)

This message was edited Sep 27, 2005 11:11 AM

Way to go sanannie! I'm proud of you too :-)

Pam, my mother and I did talk about the disappearing frogs every now and again over the years. If she was hiding somethin' she was awful good at it! I always suspected that she may have been a double agent but, unfortunately, she's gone now so I can't prove it one way or the other.

Here's my turtle story.

Where'd the Fish Go?
Our neighbour down the street had a small pond dug into his backyard a number of years ago. He was so proud of that little pond and how he and his wife had landscaped it, but he was especially proud of the turtle that had taken up residence there almost as soon as it was done. He saw that as the ultimate badge of approval!

After a little while he got to thinking that it would be really nice to have a few goldfish in the pond too, so off he went to town and came back with a bag full of cute little pond fishies. Very carefully following the fish store's instructions he floated the bag on top of the water for a while to equalize the temperature and then started gradually allowing just a little pond water into the bag at a time. Once the acclimatization process was complete he opened up the bag and let those little fishies run free, and all was well with his world.

The next day, he went out to check on his pond and.....oh no! There were no fish! He searched and searched through all the plants, under and behind the rocks, and couldn't find so much as a fin. Disappointed but not defeated he got in his truck and went back to town, returning a couple of hours later with another bagful of cute little fishies. The next day......you guessed it.......not a single fish in the pond.....but the turtle sure had a smile on his face :-)

After everyone in the neighbourhood got finished taking their humour at his expense, poor guy, someone finally told him that he was gonna have to decide if he wanted a pond full of fish, or a turtle, 'cause the way he was going he was just gonna end up with a very fat and happy turtle! He has some beautiful fish now and religiously checks for turtle-sign.

Great Stories everyone.
I can't even imagine robbing a snake of a meal!

My tank has one very large marble angel ,5 red rainbow's, 3 cory's,one black skirt tetra, one plecostumus(sp?) one glow lite tetra and two huge snails one apple and one black mystry.
the snails are the neatest the gold one is about 8 inches around and is really neat. I feed her a lettus leaf every few days.
The kids who come to the house are facinated when she is moving around the tank. She is not allowed out of the tank and I don't like snails in the garden!
Ann

Wow! Can you post some pics of your snails Ann? I'd love to see them. Actually, I'd love to see pics of all your fishy friends.

How big is your plecostomus? I always found that the bigger they get the lazier they get. My mother once had one that was almost 20 inches long in a 100 gallon tank. He was so big he had to be brought home in a big green garbage bag :-) Instead of cleaning up leftover food and algae and all the stuff he was supposed to do he'd wait for someone to feed the rest of the fish and then just bulldoze his way to the front of the line and get it delivered nice and fresh.

He was also pretty aggressive at that size, and that was something I didn't know happened as they grew larger. If another fish annoyed him or was just in his way he would just attack with his suction cup mouth and leave big round welts on them. Another thing he used to do was climb his way up the side of the tank in a corner as far as he could go until he could hook those stiff side fins of his (pectoral?) over the top edges. Then he would just hoist himself right out of the water and the tank and fall flat on the floor. We all learned pretty quickly that you checked on him as often through the day as you could. He was pretty strong too. If you caught him near the top edge of the tank it was all you could do to push him back down again.

Oh, this is wonderful! All of these memories coming back that I haven't thought of in years. Keep it coming everyone! --Ginny

Good morning everyone! I sure hope we get some more stories, maybe a few pics, and hopefully even a few more "just droppin' in's" today. I plan to take some pics this weekend - I'll post some if I do.

Ginny
I will try to take photos of the snails. I may have to wait for when they come up to the top edge and take them out of the tank.(but then you only see the shell not the neat part like their skirt and anteni) My flash may interfere with the glass /photo. They are the neatest when they are out looking for food like when I put the lettus in there. I'll give that a try and I will try to stop the flash.
Yes the pleco's can be aggressive and I gave my big one away when he hit 12 inches as he was too big for my tank. My smaller guy is about 7 inches long and likes to hide inside a tree log.
They are very peaceful to watch.
Ann

oops, thats what I get for just jumping in!!! aquaria, not ponds. Oh well

I had a small (30 gallon) aquarium for many years; my very favourite were the clown loaches. Here is a pic of Basil, from a loach site (honest) http://www.loaches.com/species_images/clown_loach_basil.jpg

I moved my tank when I moved, everyone survived until a couple of months into fall we had a 3 day power outage. I watched my little loaches sink to the bottom, tears fell.

BUT imagine this, the power came on and I let the water heat slowly and EVERYONE came back to life. tears of joy this time! A little groggy, but so were we. well -- actually I did lose two cichlids (name escapes me, compatible with plants and other fish, unlike the most) and that was sad, but still.....

but I never ever ever put them in my pond. Maybe there is a loachful future for me yet. I still miss them, they are such funny clicky little guys.

I can identify with how much you liked the clown loaches you had hortensia. I had a couple for about ten years. One of them was quite large. Such busy fish. I miss mine too but must admit I got a bit tired of having aquariums after about 12 years. I would love to have a pond though.

Sandy

I hope you manage to get a shot Ann. I've never seen snails that big before, and your golden one sounds lovely.

Hortensia, this thread is about ponds too. It just so happens that we were all talking about aquarium fishies when you popped in. Clown loaches are great fish, and how cool is that that your Basil has his pic on the net!

Sandy, I know just how you feel about getting tired of having aquariums. After being in the wholesale business for a number of years and having wall-to-wall-tanks even after that in a room in the basement, the amount of work involved used to make me think, "When am I gonna smarten up and get a life!" LOL

Well, I'm off to plant trees now. Two Japanese Whitespire Birches and two different Japanese Maples - one Tamaguchi (or somethin' like that) and one whose name escapes me right now. Then I'll try to get some pics of my fishies and gardens. Talk to y'all later! --Ginny

Here's some pics of my three pond fish, temporarily residing in an aquarium. First the big Koi. Although it's hard to get a good perspective in the picture, he's about 10 inches long.

And here's a shot of all three of them at once. The other two are ordinary comet goldfish. The pic is a little blurry 'cause they wouldn't hold still.

thanks for the reassurance, but let me hasten to say that is NOT my basil, just " a loach named Basil" which all on its own I thought was pretty cute.

I have a koi named Reggie (and others) but alas, no pictures of them yet.

Sandy, i agree about the aquarium, there comes a point when enough is enough. I hope you can get a pond, it is so much easier especially for us here on the west coast. I leave my pump and filter running all year, do a partial drain in spring to feed the lilies and clean out debris (and this year, I hope, net some of the excess goldfish the heron didn't get.) feed the fish and THATS IT.

no fussing with cleaning filters (well, not so often) and no running over onto the floor, no panic when power goes out... no vacuuming the bottom. No clown loaches. Now that is sad. But Reggie, Charlie and Stella eat out of my hand, and so do two of the Daxes.

The older I get the more I realize anything permanent in my life has to be pretty self maintaining. My partner says he has known this for some time, but luckily, he has the same attitude. LOL

Well, back out, I am not finished my assigned weeding....the weeds are all too ready to look after themselves!
Marian

G'day all! Here's the next installment on fish stories.

Years ago, when my stepfather and I were at the beginning stages of setting up our tropical fish wholesale business, we took a trip down to the Florida keys to set up our contacts for purchasing, packaging, shipping, etc. for the salt water side of the business.

Everything went amazingly well and we had a couple of days at the end of our trip to just relax and enjoy the Keys. Well, for fish nuts like us, relaxing and enjoying the Keys means checking out the shallow inlets and tidal pools for marine life that can be boxed up and brought back home to Canada :-)

We caught a couple of nice, small, very colourful fish (don't remember what kind), a baby barracuda about 3 inches long, and my prize......a baby flying fish! At 2 inches long he was soooooooo cute - just a miniature version of a fully grown flying fish.

We took them to one of our new contacts who bagged and boxed them for us and set up a little bubbler that would run off of the car's cigarette lighter. Well, once those little fishies were packaged we had about 30 hours to get home with them before they would start to suffer stress. So, we grabbed a couple of hours sleep and set off on the trip back to Ontario. We drove straight through - only stopping for gas and meals, and once for another couple of hours for a quick catnap when we were both too tired to drive anymore.

We made it home safely with time to spare. There was still about 4 hours left on the clock for our new little friends. We took them into the house, and I was so excited! I'd be the only one in the whole city with a flying fish in her tank. We opened the box and.......no flying fish! Oh nooooooo! We checked carefully through all the plants we had included, under and behind the pieces of coral (beginning to sound familiar?), but couldn't even find a piece of his little sail fin. It wasn't until we were netting all the remaining fish into their new tank and we got to that tiny little barracuda that we both looked at each other.....and burst out laughing. If that wasn't the height of stupidity - putting a barracuda and a teeny little flying fish together in the same confined space for almost a day and a half! LOL I'm blonde, I don't know what his excuse was.

LOL, Ginnylynn, that's too funny!

LOL Love your added emotion in the froggie rescue story sanannie! That makes it even better than it was originally.

Ginny
Here is the best I can do. It is hard to get past the glass and If I bring her out she hides.
The black one (him)didn't turn out at all . I'm calling the gold one her cause she has made babies a few times and I've seen her laying. The white stuff on her shell is the deposits from our hard water. (so I'm told).

Oh, she's beautiful Ann! What do you do with the babies she has - or do the fish eat the little ones?

The babys get picked up by other fish but they spit them out. I started out with hundreds and end up with 10 or so they then take forever to grow. Some just don't make it and go between the gravel. They are very tiny about 1/4 the size of a grain of rice.
Some get sucked up when I clean the gravel and no matter how hard I try I'm not able to save them all.
Oh well at least they aren't in the garden , then they would drive me nuts.
Ann