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!

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!)