Unheated stock tank, in the southern great plains
Cross-posted from the chat board.
I watched my neighbor and his dad a couple days ago. They were busy breaking up and throwing all the ice off their water tank.
Here in North Central Oklahoma, we seldom get long, really cold stretches. As long as the temps stay about, say zero most of the time, with few consecutive days much below, I get along without a tank heater. Have for eight years now, since I moved here.
But I just chop a 6-8 inch roundish hole in one side of my (6′x2′x2′ round-ended) tank, and either push the ice back on top of the rest of the ice, or down under in the water. This way the ice acts as insulation, slowing turning the rest of the water into ice. I open the hole twice a day, when I feed.
Any time I run water, ice melts. Plus, we seldom get more than a couple weeks between freezing – and the ice starts melting back into tank water. The four-foots get by OK, keep weight on, spirits up. And the gold fish in the tank (help keep down algae) get through the winter OK, too. (I lose goldfish mostly when I run the tank over when filling – the new water flushes away too much of the existing water, too much change to quick for them.) I only have one fish four years now, and one from two years ago.
A hammer works fair for hole-chopping, a 24″ wrecking bar has been good for the last two winters – it hangs right on the fence by the tank.
That looked like a thankless job, watching them haul that ice out of that tank.
Tags: Stock tank, Winter ice
January 1st, 2009 at 11:15 pm
Goldfish in the stock tank! Oh my goodness, why didn’t I think of that?! The tank gets absolutely disgusting in the summer … that would work wonders, I am sure. I wonder if the sheep would care if there were little yellow fish darting around in their water. Probably not, eh?
Do you have any idea if this works during the winter in somewhere realy cold? It’s -25C outside now (really, really cold in Farenheit
) and it’ll be like that for weeks. We do have a tank heater in which keeps the water from freezing, although I don’t think it keeps it particularly *warm*.
Then again, there are no algae in the winter, so I suppose the fish could be brought in the house for the winter, and returned to the tank in spring. Hmmm.
What a great idea! My son would love a reduced-algae water trough … he hates scrubbing it out.
Thank you for sharing! (I actually saw your note on Sharon’s blog and followed over from there … thanks!)
January 2nd, 2009 at 9:09 am
Apple Jack Creek – Thanks for visiting!
I worried a lot about the fish the first couple of winters.
I read a bit about pond fish. I got some goldfish food, pond type, and fed the fish every so often the first year, a couple times a week usually. Then it got to be less regular. But the book said to stop feeding in late fall when the water turns cold for the winter. These last couple of years I haven’t fed but two or three times, total. It doesn’t seem to matter.
I don’t use a tank heater. The tank is 2 feet deep, and in longer cold snaps the ice may get 4-7 inches thick. The pony (and cats, once the tank freezes over) drinking, and my opening the hole, seems to be all the fish need to tolerate the winter. Goldfish are members of the carp family, rough fish. I don’t believe it hurts them if the water freezes solid about them. Certainly, they tolerate swimming under the ice well – a form of hibernation.
My neighbor uses a tank heater, and the fish stay active even with a skim of ice around the edges. He has 12 calves, 2 llamas, and 9 pygmy goats drinking from the tank – there is plenty of debris (backwash) from the drinkers, apparently, to meet any nutritional needs of the fish.
Just like any water tank – the point is to keep the water from smelling sour. In summer the tank often gets green, and maybe even strands of algae show up. But a couple cloudy days sets back the algae growth, and the fish catch up. The water may be green with suspended small algae, but still smells fresh. When the smell turns, or a fish dies, it is (past!) time to siphon the muck off the bottom along with 1/4 the water. You don’t want the tank too clean, or change all the water (that is when I lose fish, just like with the aquarium), so letting the tank run over too long so you flush the whole tank a time or three, is the major problem.
I treat the fish just like I was putting them in an aquarium. Bring them home in their store-bag, and lay the bag, intact, in the tank. After a half hour the water in the bag and in the tank is well-synchronized for temperature. Then I gently open the bag, and use my hand like a slotted spoon to scoop the fish out of the water, and lay my hand on the top of the tank, and ease my hand down, to ease the fish into the tank. With an aquarium there is a concern that water from the store tank might carry some illness home, that would nail the fish already in your tank. This reduces that risk a bunch. I do it with the stock tank .. because it won’t hurt anything.
Note that the bright sunlight will keep the fish from getting very colorful, as will the all-algae diet. If you want to see more colorful fish, I guess you could put a partial cover over the tank (which also retains heat, keeps down dust and dirt, etc.).
Domestic animals get used to the darndest things. I can’t imagine fish in the water tank would be any stranger than watching us stick a hose in, or hear a float let go.
Luck!
January 2nd, 2009 at 8:21 pm
Wow, thanks for all that information! I’ll definitely be trying this out.