Hello from Houston and Help!

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
K

kostelacj

Feeder Fish
Dec 17, 2007
0
0
0
Houston, TX
I have a largish (55,000 gals) filled with a variety of fish including Pacu, Pleco, various tetras, danio, barbs, anabantids, and two species of cichlids. Can you guess which I am having issues with? The cichlids. They are over-running the place. I have convicts, not so much a problem, but about 3 years ago I put two pair of Texas Cichlids in the pond. Now I have hundreds, nay, thousands of them. I have put oscars in, shovel nose catfish and other large predators only to have then eaten by the Texas Cichlids. Does anyone know of a predator that can help with this while giving my other fish a fair shot at survival? Or does anyone want to bring a cast net and catch a mess for their own pond? Short of that does anyone know a good recipe for Texas Cichlids?

Desparate to reduce the population.

Thanks,

John
 
Welcome, do you have a picture of your setup?
 
ya pic would be cool
 
Here is an older artistic one done by my wife in 2003.
pondlightmail.jpg
 
cool pic, are those live plants? in the rain?

if you remove the cover (ex. rocks, pots, etc.) for the cichilds and dont give them a place to hide then your other monsters should be able to slowly pick them off perhaps?
 
kostelacj;1356769; said:
Here is an older artistic one done by my wife in 2003.
pondlightmail.jpg
Click to expand...



WOW is this in your yard?? That looks amazing! More pics PLEASE!!!!

Welcome to MFK!!
 
I have moved the pond cam to be able to show more images. And I will provide a bit more detail on the structure. But first a note to GR8KarmaSF... The pic above shows the lily part of the pond. It is a safe haven for sword tails, mollies, etc. The main part of the pond is an open area with no shelter and that is where the TCs breed. Right in front of everyone. Their fry clouds are sometimes a foot accross and no one, not even the shovel nose, dares cross the mom and dad. One early pair ripped the lips off an aggressive albino Oscar. Four arowanas have given their lives in the effort as well.

So now for more info. The pond is roughly 45 feet long, 22 feet wide and ranges from 6 feet (for about 8 of the 45 feet) deep to 13 feet deep. Water is pulled from the bottom and top and sent through a sand filter and DE filter in parallel which both feed the heater (we keep the pond in the high 70s or even up to 80 degrees for SCUBA) to a combination of a 20 ton bog and a 3000 gallon upper pond filled with anachris, cabomba and more plants. This upper pond flows at 6000 gph into an 85 foot long, 4 - 6 foot with .5 to 3 foot deep creek back into the main pond. Many small and some larger fish have leapt the two water falls to inhabit both the creek and upper pond. A third major pump drives a large waterfall into the main pond. That water passes through a 520 watt UV system before re-entering the pond. Visibility is excellent and diving is always in season.

A side note, this pond also serves as a reservoir to the house in the event of a water outage. The whole system is normally powered from the grid, but I also have a 25Kw genset that automatically takes over when needed. Should the local water system fail I can pump the water from the pond through a series of sediment filters, UV and chlorination systems and then carbon filter (to remove the nasty chlorine and other volatiles) and then into the house. No worries.

Windows users should be able to see a live feed at: http://76.30.231.119:81 The username and password are demo and demo.

Now back to my problem how to get rid of the TC's or how to cook 'em.

John
 
wow that is WAY 2 cool you need to ge fishing for TC'S
 
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