The house next to mine is in foreclosure purgatory so I took the swimming pool in the back under my wing. It first started with a few Gambusia to fight off the mosquito larva. A few months went by and I noticed that the Gambusia were fat and happy so I had to intervene. I threw in a few BG from the ditch across the street and one little LMB.

Out of the blue, the bank sent someone over to drain the pool and mow the front yard. I did my best to get out all of my children and released them back into the ditch.

The rain came and filled it up again. I had to use some plumber's putty to get it up above the light. I added more Gambusia and some Sailfin Mollies. Later down the road I added some RES and GSH.

In an effort to check on the progress, I poked around with my GoPro. Apparently, the BG from before spawned and some of the young survived. I put 6 RES in and the video footage shows at least 30 3"ers. I've put over 30 GSH in there but I can't detect a trace of them.

I've been trying to get the plankton to bloom. The stuff leaching out of the cement is enough to get the pH and hardness right. I added a cup or so of triple 10 and a whole bag of some leftover Miracle Grow. It's gotten better but the Secchi is still showing about 3 feet. Could I be missing the good green plankton from my bloom?

I caught a big ol RES and tossed it in there a few days ago too.

My excuse for all of this effort is to get some fish raised up to add to a 5 acre pond with the hopes of broadening the forage opportunites for the LMB and big CNBG/RES.







Never mind the handsome fellow...


I've been thinking about raising some of these guys for forage. I'm guessing they are Banded Killifish. Anyone think otherwise?

One of the best uses for a swimming pool I've ever seen. Beats the heck outa buying chemicals, and electricity to maintain it.

That's the way to take care of an abandoned swimming pool! I like it!!!

This post just reminds me of the "Beverly Hillbillies" talking about their cement pond .

You're being a good neighbor. Abandoned pools are nothing but trouble. You found a good use for that one.

Your post reminded me of a severely neglected candidate for a similar project.
Just imagine the possibilities...

You could raise a boat load in that pool!

I feed once a day with some ground up and moistened high protein fish chow.
How long should it take to get a bloom going? I'm getting impatient. Is it possible I don't have the right plankton?

This is really funny and possibly the best use for foreclosed pools I have ever seen.

Just remember without mechanical and biological filtration if you have too many fish they will have issues with ammonia and nitrites at some point.

It does look like a banded killifish to me. Excellent forage fish in my opinion.

Excellent use of the pool. Unfortunately, we don't have anything here that lasts more than 2 months before the city departments move in and drain the pools, and charge an arm and a leg to the bank/owner.

I;ve seen people turn their pools into large aquaponics fish tanks.

I dream maybe someday...

brian

Thanks for the heads up Cecil. I can't seem to get much of a bloom going. I've been trying to push it to it's limits but I think I'm a long ways away from capacity. Do I just keep adding triple 10 till the water starts getting more opaque or could I be missing key flora? Secchi depth is still around 2.5 ft.

Not to plug another website, but there's lots at guys who have converted pools to ponds on koiphen.com.

Not geared towards the same goals you have, but lots of good info there on fish load with respect to pond size / filtration, etc.

May keep you from some mistakes others have made and lost fish...

Yes Koiphen is a great site.

Thanks guys. I'm not going to run any filtration to this pool. It'll have to regulate itself. I'm just holding the fish I have in there till the water cools down enough in the big pond to foster spawning.

Update - Secchi depth is about 18 inches now. No floaters as of yet.

Secchi at 18" - your bloom is in full "swing". When the secchi drops below 12" you are in danger of DO loss at night. You should be able to trim the bloom by using some Green Clean Pro granular hand spread scattered experimentally and lightly every day or two. Monitor bloom loss with the secchi disk.

I removed the undissolved fertilizer to slow the grow. Hopefully that is sufficient. I'll keep a close eye on it.

Update - Must have had a DO drop in the pool. The big RES was floating yesterday. Bummer. Hopefully the shiners aren't next. I guess I could throw a hose over the fence and aerate...

Cecil is worried about waste build-up too...maybe exchange some of the water?

OMG that is very dirty pool... I think you need months to clean this one because there is a lot of algae. But pool is looking good.

Update - I just netted some fat Sailfin Mollies and golden shiners from the pool. I have them in tanks and will move them to the lake in the next week or so.

I used a little cast net to get them out and need to pull the trigger on a seine net to get the rest out.

Not necessarily a D.O. drop. Could have been a spike in ammonia.

Good point.

Trying to clean out the pool go grow some GSH and FHM. There's no way I'll get out everyone but hope to make a sizable dent. In doing so, I've been catching a bunch of sunfish that don't appear to be RES or BG.

What is this thing? Mouth looks to be small to be a GSF.


Picture was the best I could do w/ my cell phone.

Appears to be a spotted sunfish. They are quite common in your part of the country.

I ordered 1500 feeder FHM's from Anderson Minnows today. Should be here tomorrow. I'm pumped. I guess I'll put them in the swimming pool. Hopefully Bank of America doesn't come by and clean it out. $95 including shipping.

As delivered from Anderson.


I forgot that they mix the reds with the blacks on the feeder boxes.


Coming up to temp.


The release. The native minnows in the pool were picking on the red ones.


The only mort.


24 hours later, I can easily tell the red ones from the other species in the pool but there aren't a ton of them present. Are FHM's bottom dwellers?

When time permits, I try and thin out the Gambusia and Sailfin Mollies from the pool. I've been storing the mollies in a tank and I feed the small Gams to my bream. Until recently, I haven't had a use for the big Gambusia. I made a short video of me feeding them to the chickens. It's pretty entertaining in person.

That didn't take them long at all to finish 'em all!

I've been adding fertilizer as needed to the swimming pool. Nice darkish green color until this week. I presume some algae went hog wild? The secchi depth is still about 18 inches but the color is much brighter than previous. No die off so I'm not too concerned. Any thoughts?

Color is back to normal and I didn't notice any die off.

how long did it take to go from green back to normal?

A week or two maybe. I refertilized and the green came back. It's been bright green for a few weeks now.