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Old 25-01-2005, 06:52 PM
Derek Broughton
 
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David wrote:

I can already hear the howls of derision, and taste the flames of
scorn g.


Oh, no. Many of us would _love_ to keep tropicals in a pond.
Unfortunately, with the majority of posters being in N. America and Europe,
this just isn't possible except for a very few of us.

Don't get me wrong -- I like koi. However, I also find the extremely
large variety of tropical freshwater fish fascinating. So I am
wondering whether it might be possible to bring the worlds of ponding,
water gardening, and tropical aquaria together in the same place? Has
anyone in the group ever attempted this, or know of anyone who has?


I know there are people in Florida and California who have posted here with
Cichlid and Pleco successes.

The next obvious (and reasonable) question would be, "what happens
when all these tropical fish are subjected to freezing temperatures?"
Well, suppose this affair was to be installed in S.E. Asia, where it
never freezes. (Which if this thinking works out, will be the case.)


Huge numbers of the tropical fish that are sold in N. America have been
raised in ponds in SE Asia.

If you haven't lost interest by now, and already gone on the the next
post, we are now at the crux of the matter. It would appear to me
that this concept would have to deal with at least all of the same
issues that a koi ponder would have to address. Plus, the additional
untidy little detail of, "how do you keep all these cute little fish
from being sucked into and lost or chewed up in all of the ponding
apparatus?"


Why? Fish _do_ get sucked up in the pumps, but the flow through your
average pond is far less than even a fairly slow moving stream, so it's
pretty infrequent. The fact that they're tropicals rather than koi is
pretty irrelevant.

Is there any wishful hope that fishes generally tend to avoid things
that try to suck them in???


I'd say so. Fish may have very _small_ brains, but why would they want to
be sucked into a black hole, that leads to no known source of food or sex
(of course, if the finny object of their desires already got sucked in, all
bets are off :-))

Go for it!
--
derek