First Warm Day After Winter......

[Ludwig Venter]

Our winter season is drawing to an end....... at the beginning of it.... I placed approximately 100 Swordtails in an outside pond..... Today, we had an exceptional warm day, and at feeding.... I was amazed!!!... there are at least 1 000 Swords in that pond... and some prize specimens!!

(the picture was taken after dark, so most of them are below the floating plants... (forgotten the name of the plant)

My outside pond Guppies also flourished and multiplied....

 

[Duck and Dive]

Wow ludwig that is a lot of fish you have there! I would love to have a pond full of livebearing fish but I have no room in the garden for one.

 

[Harlequins]

wow congrats on all those fishies

 

[Ludwig Venter]

wow congrats on all those fishies

Can someone remind me of the name of the floating plant in the first pic...(know I've asked before, but cannot find the thread).... I remove about 30m of it every week.... Very prolific.

 

[Duck and Dive]

It looks like cabomba or soldier weed. Where did you get it from?

 

[Ludwig Venter]

It looks like cabomba or soldier weed. Where did you get it from?

I bought about 12" of it for around 1 bp at the pet shop some 6 years ago..... now... I chuck it out in the garden every week..... I know cabomba... it's not that.... something to the effect of hornwort or the likes.....

 

[Nick16]

is it egeria or elodea? - they are not floating plants (if thats what you are talking about) floating plants are things like salvinia

 

[Ludwig Venter]

is it egeria or elodea? - they are not floating plants (if thats what you are talking about) floating plants are things like salvinia

They are definitely floating plants.... never makes any roots & grows about 3" per day..... I'll (again) try to find my topic where they were correctly named.....(very much like cabomba, but a lot finer)....

 

[Ludwig Venter]

Ah!!... I've found it..... It is in fact called Hornwort as I suggested.... The link below shows the amount I remove every week.
http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=267224&hl=

 

[OldMan47]

That is a lot of hornwort to remove each week Ludwig. The sheer volume of it may be why you get such nice high survival rates on your livebearers.

 

[Mollygirls]

Thats amazing Ludwig! I would love to have an outside pond as well however I dont think tropical livebearers could handle a Canadian winter. Heck I can barely handle it!

 

[dunchp]

Thats amazing Ludwig! I would love to have an outside pond as well however I dont think tropical livebearers could handle a Canadian winter. Heck I can barely handle it!

I have some small summer only ponds. They work OK, but yours are fantastic Ludwig.

What is the set up? What size, filtration if any?

 

[Ludwig Venter]

I call them ponds, only because I keep them outside... Actually, they are containers (5 of them) each 4ft x 4ft x 3ft deep......

It is only the Platy/Mollie pond that has some sort of "homemade" filtration.... The others are Convicts, Blue Gouramies, Guppies, and Swords...... The convicts and Blue Gouramies each has a 300w heater in and the rest are not heated.....(I used to keep 4kw geyser elements in all for winter use, but decided to test them this year) the winter is almost finished & it seemed to have worked..... The fish survived their winter outside.

 

[youngfisher]

Would these fish survive a winter outside in england?

YF

 

[Truck]

Would these fish survive a winter outside in england?

YF

no its too cold...ive had cherry shrimp live outside through the winters though as have many others