Considering a Tropical Pond

[charles-n-charge]

I'm 50 Miles north of Houston Tx and have started building my outdoor tropical pond.
I see you have pacus in there so clearly youll have to keep the water warm in our short cold season.
I'm sure you've already said it, but what is your plan for heating the water? It'll need to stay at at least 65f, if not more. And I'm still looking for good heating ideas if you dont mind lol

If anyone has some advice, that would be great. This whole thread has been very helpful to me

 

[Duncan6618]

I don't have any plans to heat it for the pacu. I know from last winter that 50F is the lowest water temp I can expect since it was a exceptionally cold winter. According to the study below 45F is the low temp tolerance for 1 yr old pacu and 2 yr old pacu tolerated 45F quite well.

http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=1421818


So I will just wait and see how they do. I figure if they don't handle it as well as the article suggests they will be lethargic enough that I can net them out and put them into a heated tub until temps get into the 60's. The water was around 60F when I added them, they had no problems with it and even continued feeding at 60F.

On the other end of the spectrum, my pond is up to 93F with this ridiculous heat wave and all the fish are tolerating it just fine.

 

[charles-n-charge]

I don't have any plans to heat it for the pacu. I know from last winter that 50F is the lowest water temp I can expect since it was a exceptionally cold winter. According to the study below 45F is the low temp tolerance for 1 yr old pacu and 2 yr old pacu tolerated 45F quite well.

http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=1421818


So I will just wait and see how they do. I figure if they don't handle it as well as the article suggests they will be lethargic enough that I can net them out and put them into a heated tub until temps get into the 60's. The water was around 60F when I added them, they had no problems with it and even continued feeding at 60F.

On the other end of the spectrum, my pond is up to 93F with this ridiculous heat wave and all the fish are tolerating it just fine.

So with no heating or cover or anything at all, your water stayed about 50f naturally all winter?
If you don't mind, would you mind explaining to me everything you know about your ponds yearly temps and how well the fish do with everything on my pond thread? I saw that you were following it
That would be a HUGE help to me

 

[Duncan6618]

So with no heating or cover or anything at all, your water stayed about 50f naturally all winter?
If you don't mind, would you mind explaining to me everything you know about your ponds yearly temps and how well the fish do with everything on my pond thread? I saw that you were following it
That would be a HUGE help to me

Yes the lowest temp was 50F. That was during the cold spell where we had 4 straight days of temps never getting above freezing, which I don't recall ever happening before. The water temp dropped about 2 degrees per day then. This is around 25000 gallons so you might see a faster drop in temp with a smaller water volume. The rest of winter (january & february) the temp ranged from upper 50's to mid 60's (mostly 60's). We really didn't have a spring this year and went straight to temps around 100F in March so the water temp has been in the upper 80's/ low 90's most of the time since then. The high temps don't seem to bother the fish at all.

 

[spadoc79]

freakin sweet pond!! im so jealous!

 

[Duncan6618]

According to the study below 45F is the low temp tolerance for 1 yr old pacu and 2 yr old pacu tolerated 45F quite well.

http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=1421818

Well I can officially report that this study is wrong. The water temp dropped to 54F with the recent cold spell and the Pacu went belly up.

 

[charles-n-charge]

Sooo... Just wondering if you ever had intentions of getting more pacus... lol

 

[Duncan6618]

I forgot about this thread.

I've done a few things this summer. First, I got rid of the sand filter and replaced it with an Advantage Bead Pond filter. It is much easier to keep clean. Even with the permabeads the sand filter just required too much water to backwash the filter enough to get it clean. Second, I put up a 16'x16' shade sail to try and keep the water a little cooler during the summer.

I'm a little bored with koi & goldfish though so I am bound and determined to go tropical. Solar won't provide enough heat & gas/electric heaters would be too expensive. So I'm going to try and make a wood burning pool heater. I found some commercial ones that would get the job done but they are pretty expensive so I just ordered this stainless steel heat exchanger (it's a 76' 3/4" pipe)

I'll post pics once I get things rolling. I think it's going to work but wish me luck.

 

[Moneypit]

Just be carefull you don't make a bomb, it is real hard to regulate the heat to keep from boiling the water in the coil and making steam. Make sure you use a good presure relief valve.

 

[cordero01]

really nice pond man