Australian Native fish for water bowl

[pebbleoz]

Its a myth that a fish grows to match its environment. If fish stay small in a small container its most likely stunted growth.

Good to know, thank you.

 

[Stephen Noble]

At first I was confused who obtained fish and which person had the 40 liter tank. Paddymguire has the 40 liter so Pebble, has what size is your pond?

 

[pebbleoz]

My pond is 2500 litres (660 gallons).

Native rainbow fish are small - 3 inches maximum and they are narrow fish. They are not showy at all. They look brown from the top of the pond even though they have a small colourful streak down their side. I’d like to add some comets to our pond just for colour but they eat the rainbow roe and fry so I won’t. The rainbows breed freely in our pond and they don’t eat frog eggs.

It’s a different experience but we are happy to just have the rainbows.

 

[Stephen Noble]

Good deal. I thought for a minute all of those fish were going into that 40 liter tank!

 

[pebbleoz]

Good deal. I thought for a minute all of those fish were going into that 40 liter tank!

Sorry for the confusion. The 40 litre bucket was just to transport the fish! And they were about 1 inch or less long then.

Still, our pond is tiny compared to most on the forum.

 

[Pharian]

I’d like to add some comets to our pond just for colour but they eat the rainbow roe and fry so I won’t. The rainbows breed freely in our pond and they don’t eat frog eggs.

If you get some good matting aquatic plants then you should be able to keep some larger fish in there as well. When I was younger my mother had a pond that had a ton of breeding guppies in it (in Sydney, they actually do OK in the Sydney winter), as well as some much larger fish. The guppy fry would hang out in the aquatic plants until they were big enough to go it in the open. Some would get eaten, but they are such prolific breeders that it barely dented the population (probably kept the guppies in check more than anything). How many rainbow fry do you have? My mother's pond was so dense with guppies we had to periodically take them out and give a hundred to the fish shop.

Frogs eggs are a different story I guess, they could get chomped by larger fish, but then generally they will lay in the weed mat too... though tadpoles are kinda stupid when it comes to keeping hidden.

 

[pebbleoz]

I have about 20 fry now and another 40 fish at various stages of growth. I think the kookaburra get either frog, fish or tadpoles every so often. and we have lizards skulking around too. Thanks for the advice. I’ll keep it in mind.

We have far more frogs now than we did when we had goldfish. But that might be for a number of reasons.
Sounds like your mother had a fabulous pond!