Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations New Aquarium and Observations

So the whole family spent the entire day at our new farm yesterday and mostly fished in our small pond. The wind was fairly steady and had blown all of the watermeal and floating mats of FA off to one side, so the conditions were really nice. What a beautiful day it was, with sunny skies and really mild temps in the upper 60s/low 70s. We ended up catching around 45 - 50 fish, a mix of BG and LMB. We were really pleasantly surprised by the size of some of the gills. Several were easily in 7 - 9 inch range and many of them had a very different pinkish coloration to their bodies, something I've never seen before in BG.

Anyhow, we ended up on a whim keeping two of the smaller BG just for the heck of it and set up a quickie 30 gallon aquarium. Their alien abduction was complete within about 3 hours of them being plucked from the pond and they seem to be pretty well adapted so far to tank life.

Here's a so-so picture of the tank:

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We are going to keep working on the environment for them by adding some plants - plastic at first, but maybe later trying some real aquatic plants if I feel that motivated. I'm running two Fluval 24 gallon filters/power heads along with some simple aeration and they seem to really be enjoying the system. They often swim into the outflow of the powerheads and circle around, almost like they're cows scratching against a fence post! They also love the bubbles and will hang out in them for 10 - 20 seconds at a time.

Here's a shot of the fish presently known as Tom and Jerry, thanks to the creative bent of our kids. Jerry is in the foreground of this shot and that's Tom hanging out in back.

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Interestingly, Tom, a little darker with brighter blue coloration around his mouth, is the aggressor in the relationship (much like the cartoon!). Jerry is more yellow all across his body, though still obviously has the vertical striping. Tom tends to chase Jerry around the tank, nipping at his fins and occasionally body checking him after a fashion so Jerry can't swim away. As well, as Tom makes a move towards Jerry, he will almost always flare his gills out, obviously in some sort of visual aggression thing common in the animal world. All in all, it's been really interesting to watch and whole family has spent a bunch of time checking them out since we got 'em set up last night.

Anyway, just wanted to share this with the gang as it's really cool, especially since these guys came out of our own pond. My oldest daughter said it was really cool that we have these awesome fish and they didn't cost us anything. I couldn't help but observe the purchase price of the farm and the couple of hundred bucks for the tank setup offset the "free-ness" angle a bit, but hey, when it comes to giving the kids a chance to really observe wildlife and have some family fun, there's probably no way to put a price on that!