My Pond In Cairns, Australia

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jennifer615

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Hi everyone, this is Jennifer from Cairns, Australia, and we have a pond full of platys. Originally we had 5 goldfish in it, and they grew quite large. I went to a school fete and purchased, what I thought were 3 baby goldfish, but they were actually platys. Well they started breeding almost straight away, and we thought they were baby goldfish. We got an aquariam for our son and took some from the pond and put them into the aquarium. My husband, who used to have tropical fish in the UK, said he thought they were platys, and we have since had this confirmed. It's just great having an outside pond full of platys! I have purchased a pair of black mollies and orange swordtails and put them in the pond, and hopefully they will breed soon. Here are a couple of photos of my pond, and the fish coming up for food.

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Your pond looks lovley :good: but be warned the sward tail will breed with your platy's. I used to always put a nice orange male sward tail with my platty's to inject some orange into the next generations colours. I am interged on how you keep the Cane toads out of your pond, as the rotton things around my yard (Central QLD) sometimes even manage to get in my raised bath tub that doubles as a pond. The mollies should be happy enough with planty of algea, I have known them to live and breed for years in horse/ cattle toughs and open topped water tanks with no food put in, they seemed to just thrive off the aglea, insects and probably eating a fair number of their fry. Do you have any water plants actually growing in the water? I see the alocasia (elephants ears) is potted up on the waters edge A lily would proabably get too big but some ambulia or elodea would do well in there as would some straight vallis rooted into some sand in the bottom of the pond. The beauty of the other water plants is that if they grow too wildly you can always snipp them back and put the cut off bits on the garden, plus the plants will give your fry a better chance of surviving all the adult mouths and possibly even slow down any assults from king fishers. Some of my resident king fishers have discovered my ponds ( I also have a 1000L round horse trough again raised above ground to keep the cane toads out) but thankfully they don't manage to totally clean out my stock of fish.
 
Your pond looks lovley :good: but be warned the sward tail will breed with your platy's. I used to always put a nice orange male sward tail with my platty's to inject some orange into the next generations colours. I am interged on how you keep the Cane toads out of your pond, as the rotton things around my yard (Central QLD) sometimes even manage to get in my raised bath tub that doubles as a pond. The mollies should be happy enough with planty of algea, I have known them to live and breed for years in horse/ cattle toughs and open topped water tanks with no food put in, they seemed to just thrive off the aglea, insects and probably eating a fair number of their fry. Do you have any water plants actually growing in the water? I see the alocasia (elephants ears) is potted up on the waters edge A lily would proabably get too big but some ambulia or elodea would do well in there as would some straight vallis rooted into some sand in the bottom of the pond. The beauty of the other water plants is that if they grow too wildly you can always snipp them back and put the cut off bits on the garden, plus the plants will give your fry a better chance of surviving all the adult mouths and possibly even slow down any assults from king fishers. Some of my resident king fishers have discovered my ponds ( I also have a 1000L round horse trough again raised above ground to keep the cane toads out) but thankfully they don't manage to totally clean out my stock of fish.

Ahh canetoads, I hate them!! I can't really keep them out, but when I find them in the pond, I shoo them out, either with a stick, a net or the hose. I think they will eat the fish, but my husband doesn't seem to think so. We have kingfishers here, but my pond is quite sheltered, so I don't think they've gotten any fish (touch wood). We don't really have any plants in the pond, but there is alot of vegetation on the bottom which I clean out weekly. I will however consider putting some of the plants you suggested in there. I've ordered some blue mickey mouse platys and black mollies from Livefish which should be arriving on Wednesday, so I'm sure they will do well and add a bit of colour.
 
Surprisingly, there are 2 couples in the pond, a pair of ducks and a pair of swans couple. I feel especially bad Swan. Their good white neck deep into the water in search of food. Even if they swim in dirty water, but they are still white.
 
Rather than just shoo the cane toads away (they just come back when your not looking anyway) catch them, kill them (but not with salt or other chemicals) and put them back in your garden as fertilzer, they make great fertilzer so finally a use for them besides stuffing them for the tourist trade. If you do decide to kill the toads PLEASE make sure they are all only cane toads and none of our precious native toads/ frogs have snuck in with them. Even though cane toads are deadly poisonous I always find little burrowing toads snuggled up with cane toads under almost any form of shelter in the yard. I pick up cane toads all the time with my bare hands (but wash my hands and arms well afterwards) but you can use washing up gloves or disposable latex gloves to handle them if your worried about the poison. I believe that offically the kindest way to kill cane toads is by putting them in a bag in the freezer for a couple of days, but most people get a bit turned off by that idea. I have to do regular cane toad culls in my yard as my dopey staffy LOVES chasing them and snapping at them getting high. He comes away from them foaming at the mouth but still can't resist having a snap at them.

I see you ordered some fish from Livefish I am guessing that is LIvefish.com.au. I recently got some sparkling gouramis and more plants from them and all arrived alive fit and healthy. I guess I am lucky too in that I am only about 3hrs by car away from Childers where Livefish is situated. Hope your fish all arrived well.
 

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