# Pond with south americans



## Ardeus (Oct 17, 2005)

A couple of weeks ago I built a small pond.

It has no filtration and the fish list is:

- 5 Corydoras paleatus;
- 5 Gymnogeophadus meridionalis;
- 7 Hyphessobrycon anisitsi (Tetra Buenos Aires)
- 4 Macropodus opercularis (Paradise fish)

They are all young fish, for the exception of the male paradise fish.

Here are a few photos with the evolution so far.













And an underwater video:


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## metricliman (Sep 3, 2012)

Nice! Is that papyrus? Also, what is the large body of water?


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## Ardeus (Oct 17, 2005)

Yes, it's a papyrus. And it's the Atlantic ahead.


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## JoeE (Jun 11, 2012)

That's awesome. I wish I could do something like that. Do your gymnos get a cooling period?


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## Ardeus (Oct 17, 2005)

At night the temperature goes down to 18º (64º F) and during the day it varies according to how much sun it gets, but it can get as high as 23º (73º F). I'm a bit worried about how things will turn out during the summer.


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## Mr.Dempsey (Jan 4, 2012)

Aweosme pond!! the video looks like you took it in their natural setting, and for the heat make a sun shade so the pond doesn't get direct sunlight during the summer, should help things stay cooler.


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## Ardeus (Oct 17, 2005)

Thanks for the idea. I think I will put some kind of coverage during summer. Maybe some potted plants around will do the trick.

In the morning it's normally around 19ºC (66ºF). I'm guessing that today, without clouds, the temperature will rise to 24ºC (75ºF).

The pond is too shallow. It's only 50 cms at its deepest part.


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## halffrozen (Sep 24, 2011)

I know it is a bit late... but EPDM would be a great material for containing that pond in. Or even HDPE, though HDPE suffers a bit from cold weather and it is prone to massive expansion and contraction.


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## Ardeus (Oct 17, 2005)

No it's not too late.

I built this pond as a temporary pond, because I just moved to a rented house, so I chose the cheapest option that would allow to keep the lake for a year at most.

But the landlady loved it so much that she wants to do something to make it permanent and bigger.

I will take note about the EPDM.


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## Ardeus (Oct 17, 2005)

I have these guys in the pond:



I'm thinking about taking the fish out of the pond to an aquarium.

Any suggestions that would help deal with the problem?


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## mambee (Apr 13, 2003)

Looks like dragonfly larvae.


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## dreday (Oct 12, 2007)

yup dragon fly larvae. very nice view of the pond. I would watch the salinity of your pond being so close to the ocean. A few water changes will help control that as well.


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## Ardeus (Oct 17, 2005)

After watching the last minute of this video, I am preparing to get rid of the pond.


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## dreday (Oct 12, 2007)

LOL thats nature. they are the least of your worries, they are eating the bag bugs that can hurt your fish. Then they morph and fly away.


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## Ardeus (Oct 17, 2005)

I think I saw the adults and they are the largest dragonflies I have ever seen. These nymphs will get nightmare material big. They will easily catch a fish as big as them, which means every fish in the pond.


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## dreday (Oct 12, 2007)

I doubt that. We have them here in every body of water. They may eat some small fish but if your fish are bigger than 1" I would not worry. Even if they are breeding in the pond you will still get decent survival.

A bigger problem is birds that can sit there and eat as much as they can.


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## Ardeus (Oct 17, 2005)

I found the black one in the foto in my Tanganyika tank, after I noticed a couple of fish missing. It's a tank with male Neolamprologus multifasciatus close to 2" in length.

I brought some floating plants from the pond to the tank and that's when I introduced the nymph in the tank.

This nymph is roughly the size of a male multie and she is at most 3 months old. I wouldn't be surprised if it doubled its size. The pond has many places for the nymphs to hide when they hatch and I think that if I let nature follow its course I will end up with lots of them.

The largest fish in the pond is a paradise fish and if the nymphs continue to grow, they will be be big enough to catch him.

I have one nymph in a small aquarium by itself and I'm going to try and see how it will react to Fluvermal (a synthetic broad-spectrum anthelmintic). If that doesn't work, I will bring the fish home.


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## dreday (Oct 12, 2007)

I dont think that will work. You might need something strong like dylox or dimilin, both of which are restricted use pesticides here in the US. Not sure about portugal.

But that is one of the problems you fight with outdoor ponds. You can try to catch them out and keep the numbers low, or put in bigger fish. Good luck.


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## Ardeus (Oct 17, 2005)

Thanks dreday.

I tried to learn a bit about the two products you suggested and I think they are a bit too dangerous.

Tomorrow I'm going to increase the dose of Fluvermal and wait to see what happens. If that doesn't solve the problem I'm going to take the fish out of the pond. At least I will be able to see them much better.

Here's an underwater view of the pond:


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## dreday (Oct 12, 2007)

wow great video. i would hook that up as a web cam, that would be sweet!!!

and it looks great, i would try to catch as many as you can. your fish seem very happy in there. If the smallest fish is a paradise gourami they should be fine once they grow a bit. At 3" i would bet they go after the larvae. I could be wrong but i would at least give it some more time. it is a beautiful setup and they seem very happy.


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## Ardeus (Oct 17, 2005)

That's the view from an underwater camera, because the fish are very shy and during the day they were always in the shade, under the floating plants. Only at dusk I could see them wondering through the entire pond.

But today Ripley (the dragonfly nymph) was still alive although I had doubled the amount of Fluvermal in her tank.

So, today I took most of the plants out of the pond, some rocks and almost all the water so I could catch the fish. They were all there, even the tiny corydoras.

They are now in a 32" x 32" x 20" tank inside the house.

Ripley went back to the pond. I found a couple of dragonfly nymphs in the pond, but they were much smaller than Ripley. I'm sure there are more of them there. If they grow as much as Ripley, they would have no problem hunting fish like the corydoras. I'm going to get 2 or 3 red fish for the pond to control the mosquito population.

At least now I can see the fish... it's a nice bunch:

- 5 Gymnogeophagus meridionalis
- 7 Tetras Buenos Ayres
- 5 Corydoras paleatus
- 5 Paradise fish

Tomorrow I'm going to start decorating their tank. Maybe some of them will go back to the pond some day, when they get bigger.


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## Ardeus (Oct 17, 2005)

Here's a video of the tank and a couple of photos taken later with an extra piece of wood.


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## simon m (Feb 19, 2013)

Thats a shame fish looked very happy in pond i would have just cought and killed as many trag larv as i could as part of pond maintenance. I read that scissoors are good just snip them in half and let fish feed. :thumb:


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## Ardeus (Oct 17, 2005)

It is a shame, but It would be impossible to do that in the pond as it is. It's heavilly planted and with lots of rocks.

Maybe some of the fish will get back to the pond by the end of the summer. I guess they will be big enough by then to avoid any problem with the nymphs.

Their behavior in the pond was so different from what I can see in the aquarium... I can see them much better now, but I kind of miss the feeling of having a true little bit of the wild just outside my door.


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## dstuer (Mar 27, 2013)

I brought one of those nymphs in with a plant from my pond last fall by mistake, kept seeing my beani fry disappear then found this. 








The adult Gymnos and Australoheros do fine, but the nymphs cull the fry a bit in the pond.
The adult dragonfly's eat their weight in mosquito per day not a bad trade off,


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## Ardeus (Oct 17, 2005)

They don't look so menacing in green 

When I had Ripley in a small tank while I tried different chemicals to see how she reacted, whenever my face was close to the water I always had the impression she was going to jump out of the water and grab my face. Shouldn't have named her like that 

The adult Australoheros don't eat the bigger nymphs?


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## dstuer (Mar 27, 2013)

I believe the adult Australoheros and Gymnos could eat the young and mid size nymphs, although I haven't seen it.








My ponds have been up at least 3 seasons and when I pulled the fish put in Oct. plenty of small nymphs come out too, I usually feed them to my largest cichlids.


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## Ardeus (Oct 17, 2005)

It's amazing how the smaller nymphs manage to survive with the fish in the pond.


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