Okay, I know this forum is mainly for big fish and not small fish, but I wanted to know if anybody else has experience with miniature ponds with fish. I have untill know four ponds in the garden, one about 3X1,5m, two mobile ponds in plastic pots and one miniature pond which has a volume of about 80l or so. It is one of those small one-piece ponds you can find often in property markets for a very low priece, and this one was even for free, because it was found in the forest (I have no idea why somebody did throw it away and why in a forest). I just made some holes about a 5mm under the upper border to avoid flooding during rain, embeded it in a flower bed and added pond soil and some plants. I filled it with water and looked how it would work.
It worked really great, and despite its very small volume it became really wonderfull. The plants at the border now hide nearly the entire visible plastic border, and the underwater plants grew very well too. At the beginning I had some problems because the pond soil was too dry and the water was for some time very dark. If I would make a further pond, I would not use pond soil anymore but only sand.
As such a small pond is too small for most native european fish I decided to add some guppies. I have to say that the first ones died afte some time, because it was still to cold, and it seems that they were an incest line with too less robustness. The next guppies made it much better and reproduced very well. They ate also a lot of mosquito larvae. At the end of autumn I had to remove them and keep them in the aquarium, because they don´t survive the very cold temperatures of middle-european winters. But they had no problems with temperatures not much over 10°C.
As guppies are very small, even a miniature pond is by far big enough for them. I have even seen people which keept them in rain barrels during the summer to reduce mosquito larvae. They are in general very hardy towards very high and even comparably low temperatures, they eat nearly everything and don´t need to be feeded. And at least the males look really great (but still not as nice as in an aquarium, because you don´t see them from the side), much nicer than any native fish I could keep in my pond.
The pond became also more and more "natural", there are a lot of dragonflies and other insects, and this year (the pond is now about one and a half year old) even some newts reproduced there.
It would be interesting to hear who else has experience with small fish in miniature ponds, and what species you keep or kept there.
It worked really great, and despite its very small volume it became really wonderfull. The plants at the border now hide nearly the entire visible plastic border, and the underwater plants grew very well too. At the beginning I had some problems because the pond soil was too dry and the water was for some time very dark. If I would make a further pond, I would not use pond soil anymore but only sand.
As such a small pond is too small for most native european fish I decided to add some guppies. I have to say that the first ones died afte some time, because it was still to cold, and it seems that they were an incest line with too less robustness. The next guppies made it much better and reproduced very well. They ate also a lot of mosquito larvae. At the end of autumn I had to remove them and keep them in the aquarium, because they don´t survive the very cold temperatures of middle-european winters. But they had no problems with temperatures not much over 10°C.
As guppies are very small, even a miniature pond is by far big enough for them. I have even seen people which keept them in rain barrels during the summer to reduce mosquito larvae. They are in general very hardy towards very high and even comparably low temperatures, they eat nearly everything and don´t need to be feeded. And at least the males look really great (but still not as nice as in an aquarium, because you don´t see them from the side), much nicer than any native fish I could keep in my pond.
The pond became also more and more "natural", there are a lot of dragonflies and other insects, and this year (the pond is now about one and a half year old) even some newts reproduced there.
It would be interesting to hear who else has experience with small fish in miniature ponds, and what species you keep or kept there.
